Abelard and Heloise

Abelard and Heloise
Constant J. Mews
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

ABELARD AND HELOISE
great medieval thinkers
Series Editor
Brian Davies
Blackfriars, University of Oxford,
and Fordham University
duns scotus
Richard Cross
bernard of clairvaux
Gillian R. Evans
john scottus eriugena

Dierdre Carabine
robert grosseteste
James McEvoy
boethius
John Marenbon
peter lombard
Philipp W. Rosemann
abelard and heloise

Constant J. Mews
ABELARD AND HELOISE
Constant J. Mews
1 2005
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mews, C. J.
Abelard and Heloise / Constant J. Mews.
p. cm.(Great medieval thinkers)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-515688-9; 0-19-515689-7 (pbk.)
1. Abelard, Peter, 10791142. 2. Heloise, d. 1164.
I. Title. II. Series.
B765.A24M49 2004
189'.4dc22 2004001243
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Series Foreword
M any people would be surprised to be told that there were any great
medieval thinkers. If a great thinker is one from whom we can learn
today, and if medieval serves as an adjective for describing anything
which existed from (roughly) the years 600 to 1500 ad, then, so it is
often supposed, medieval thinkers cannot be called great.
Why not? One answer often given appeals to ways in which medieval
authors with a taste for argument and speculation tend to invoke au-
thorities, especially religious ones. Such invocation of authority is not
the stuff of which great thought is madeso it is commonly said today.
It is also sometimes said that greatness is not to be found in the thinking
of those who lived before the rise of modern science, not to mention that
of modern philosophy and theology. Students of science are nowadays
hardly ever referred to literature earlier than the seventeenth century.
Contemporary students of philosophy in the twentieth century are often
taught nothing about the history of ideas between Aristotle (384322 bc)
and Descartes (15961650). Modern students of theology have been fre-
quently encouraged to believe that sound theological thinking is a product
of the nineteenth century.
Yet the origins of modern science lie in the conviction that the world
is open to rational investigation and is orderly rather than chaotica
conviction which came fully to birth, and was systematically explored and
developed, during the Middle Ages. And it is in medieval thinking that
we nd some of the most sophisticated and rigorous philosophical and
vi series foreword
theological discussions ever offered for human consumptionnot surpris-

ingly, perhaps, if we note that medieval philosophers and theologians, like
their contemporary counterparts, were mostly university teachers who par-
ticipated in an ongoing world-wide debate. They were not (like many
seventeenth, eighteenth, and even nineteenth-century philosophers and
theologians) people working in relative isolation from a large community
of teachers and students with whom they were regularly involved. As for
the question of appeal to authority: it is certainly true that many medieval
thinkers believed in authority (especially religious authority) as a serious
court of appeal. But as many contemporary philosophers are increasingly
reminding us, authority is as much an ingredient in our thinking as it was
in that of medieval thinkers. Most of what we take ourselves to know
derives from the trust we have reposed in our various teachers, colleagues,
and friends. When it comes to reliance on authority, the main difference
between us and medieval thinkers lies in the fact that their reliance on
authority was often more focused and explicitly acknowledged than is
ours. It does not lie in the fact that it was uncritical and naive in a way
that our reliance on authority is not.
In recent years, such truths have come to be increasingly recognized
at what we might call the academic level. No longer disposed to think
of the Middle Ages as dark (meaning lacking in intellectual richness),
many university departments (and many publishers of books and journals)
now devote a lot of their energy to the study of medieval thinking. And
they do so not simply on the assumption that it is historically important
but also in the light of the increasingly developing insight that it is full
of things with which to dialogue and from which to learn. Following a
long period in which medieval thinking was thought to be of only anti-
quarian interest, we are now witnessing its revival as a contemporary
voiceone to converse with, one from which we might learn.
The Great Medieval Thinkers series reects and is part of this exciting
revival. Written by a distinguished team of experts, it aims to provide
substantial introductions to a range of medieval authors. And it does so
on the assumption that they are as worth reading today as they were when
they wrote. Students of medieval literature (e.g., the writings of Chau-
cer) are currently well supplied (if not over-supplied) with secondary
works to aid them when reading the objects of their concern. But those
with an interest in medieval philosophy and theology are by no means so
fortunate when it comes to reliable and accessible volumes. The Great
Medieval Thinkers series therefore aspires to remedy that deciency by
concentrating on medieval philosophers and theologians, and by offering
solid overviews of their lives and thought coupled with contemporary
series foreword vii
reection on what they had to say. Taken individually, volumes in the

series will provide valuable treatments of single thinkers many of whom
are not currently covered by any comparable volumes. Taken together,
they will constitute a rich and distinguished history and discussion of
medieval philosophy and theology considered as a whole. With an eye on
college and university students, and with an eye on the general reader,
authors of volumes in the series strive to write in a clear and accessible
manner so that each of the thinkers they write on can be learned about
by those who have no previous knowledge about them. But each con-
tributor to the series also intends to inform, engage, and generally enter-
tain even those with specialist knowledge in the area of medieval think-
ing. So, as well as surveying and introducing, volumes in the series seek
to advance the state of medieval studies both at the historical and the
speculative level.
The subjects of this volume, who are appropriately buried together,
have always been linked because of their famous romantic relationship
(chronicled in Abelards Historia calamitatum and evident from a series of
letters). Two of the most controversial personalities of the twelfth century,
they were each fascinating in their own right.
Abelard was handsome, eloquent, and personable. The most outstand-
ing dialectician of his age, he enjoyed an international reputation even
in his own lifetime. And he played many and various roles. He was (not
always simultaneously, of course) a teacher, a polemicist, a lover and hus-
band, a parent, a writer, a logician, a theologian, a biblical commentator,
a metaphysician, a moral philosopher, an iconoclast, a monk, an abbot,
and (as abbot) even a potential murder victim (so he claimed). Chiey via
Peter Lombard (the subject of another Great Medieval Thinkers volume)
his inuence on thirteenth-century philosophers and theologians was con-
siderable, though he was condemned as a heretic by the 1141 Synod of
Sens, as well as by St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Innocent II.
As for Heloise: she was clearly one of the most literate women of her
time, a serious intellectual, an undoubted inuence on Abelard at various
levels, and, for much of her life, an able monastic administrator. Some-
times hailed as an icon by contemporary feminist authors, she does not
seem to have been exactly what we would now describe as a feminist.
Yet, one of the few medieval women to come down to us as doing so, she
stands out as a formidable and unusual thinker and human being.
While Abelard and Heloise are probably best known for their pro-
tracted love affair, this volume presents them not just as lovers but as
great thinkers actively concerned with many of the key issues that pre-
occupied their contemporaries. So it provides an accessible introduction
viii series foreword
not just to their turbulent lives but also to their philosophical and the-
ological ideas. A number of books have been published in recent years
that deal only with Abelards life and thought. This book, however, ex-
plores the evolution of Abelards intellectual interests in the context of
his relationship with Heloise, who so often forced Abelard to confront
questions that he had not previously asked. The book also situates both
Abelard and Heloise rmly in the context of wider intellectual debates
of the twelfth century. Its author has been publishing specialist material
on Abelard and Heloise for over twenty years. In what follows he offers
a very welcome and mature synthesis of his research on two of the most
original medieval thinkers.
brian davies
Acknowledgments
T his book has been a long time in the making. I must rst of all thank
Brian Davies, O.P., for inviting me to contribute a volume on Abelard
for this series, and then for his patience in waiting for the nal product
to appear. There have been many detours on the journey. The complexity
of the debates that surround the authenticity, dating, and literary context
of the letters and other writings associated both with Abelard and Heloise
and with their contemporaries has demanded detailed research that can
only be alluded to in this volume. In the nal analysis, the judgments
that are made in this book about what constitutes an authentic writing
or about the exact date of a particular composition are based on what
seems to me to be the most plausible interpretation of often enigmatic
evidence. Sometimes I can only raise a possibility, so as to invite further
discussion and debate. I am very aware that in this study I have concen-
trated more on some writings than on others. The nature of the surviving
evidence has meant that I have given more attention to Abelard than to
Heloise. My broader intention has been simply to provide a framework
that can help readers explore for themselves the richness of the texts that
have come down to us, not just of Abelard and Heloise but of their
contemporaries. Much more is still waiting to be discovered in the many
manuscripts that survive from the twelfth century or have been copied
from documents that have since disappeared. There is also a wealth of
material provided to us by scholars over the centuries that still needs to
be fully digested. If this book helps to promote such enquiry and to en-
x acknowledgments
courage readers to deepen their linguistic skills to get to know Abelard

and Heloise more fully, as well as to explore further the writings of their
remarkable generation, it will have been worthwhile.
Many institutions, friends, colleagues, and students have helped me
over the years. Monash University has generously supported this research.
The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton provided a wonderful en-
vironment to follow up literature impossible to nd in Australia. My
teachers, Richard Southern, David Luscombe, and Jean Jolivet, guided me
in my early studies on Abelard, for which I am grateful. I have beneted
from conversations with Michael Clanchy, Sabina Flanagan, Fiona Grif-
ths, Yukio Iwakuma, C. Stephen Jaeger, John Marenbon, Dominique
Poirel, Werner Robl, Ire`ne Rosier-Catach, Ralf Stammberger, Peter von
Moos, and David Wulstan, among others. Cary Nederman, Juanita Feros
Ruys, and John O. Ward have been particularly helpful in commenting
on a draft version of this manuscript. I am indebted to Ruys and Ward
for being privileged to use their draft edition (forthcoming in the Corpus
Christianorum) of In primis, a commentary on Cicero by William of
Champeaux, and their translation of Abelards Planctus and Carmen ad
Astralabium, forthcoming in an important volume, The Repentant Abelard:
Abelards Thought as Revealed in His Carmen ad Astralabium and Planctus
(Palgrave Macmillan). I am grateful to Palgrave Macmillan for being able
to reproduce extracts from the translation by Neville Chiavaroli and me
of the Epistolae duorum amantium included within The Lost Love Letters of
Heloise and Abelard. It remains nally to acknowledge Maryna, the one
person who has patiently watched over its genesis and development. To
her I owe a profound debt of gratitude.
Contents
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 3
1. Images of Abelard and Heloise 7
2. The Early Years: Roscelin of Compie`gne and
William of Champeaux 21
3. Challenging Tradition: The Dialectica 43
4. Heloise and Discussion about Love 58
5. Returning to Logica 81
6. The Trinity 101
7. A Christian Theologia 123
8. Heloise and the Paraclete 145
9. Ethics, Sin, and Redemption 174
10. Faith, Sacraments, and Charity 204
11. Accusations of Heresy 226
Notes 251
Bibliography 289
Index 299
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Abbreviations
Abelard and His Legacy Constant J. Mews, Abelard and His Legacy,
Variorum Collected Studies Series 504
(London: Ashgate, 2001)
AHDLMA Archives dhistoire doctrinale et litteraire du
moyen age
AL Aristoteles Latinus
BGP[T]MA Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie [und
Theologie] des Mittelalters
BnF Bibliothe`que nationale de France
CCCM Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Me-
diaeualis
CCSL Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina
CIMAGL Cahiers de lInstitut du Moyen-A ge Grec et
Latin [Universite de Copenhague]
Clm Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Codex latinus
monacensis
Cousin Petri Abaelardi opera hactenus seorsim edita, ed.
Victor Cousin, 2 vols. (Paris, 1849, 1859)
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latino-
rum
LLL Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of
Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue
xiii
xiv abbreviations
in Twelfth-Century France (New York: St.

Martins Press, 1999)
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
MS Mediaeval Studies
PL J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina
Reason and Belief Constant J. Mews, Reason and Belief in the
Age of Roscelin and Abelard, Variorum Col-
lected Studies Series 730 (London: Ash-
gate, 2002)
RTAM Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale
Works of Abelard and Heloise, and Reports of

Abelards Teaching
Carmen Carmen ad Astralabium, ed. Jose M. A. Rubingh-

Bosscher (Groningen: [privately published],
1987).
Collationes Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. and trans. John
Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2001)
Comm. Cantab. Commentarius Cantabrigiensis, ed. A. Landgraf
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 193745)
Comm. Rom. Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed.
Eligius-Marie Buytaert, CCCM 11 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1969)
Conf. d. Hel. Confessio dei ad HeloisamAbelards Last
Letter to Heloise? A Discussion and Critical
Edition of the Latin and Medieval French
Versions, ed. Charles S. F. Burnett, Mittella-
teinisches Jahrbuch 21(1986): 14755
Conf. d. Universis Peter Abelard, Confessio dei Universis: A
Critical Edition of Abelards Reply to Accusa-
tions of Heresy, ed. Charles S. F. Burnett, MS
48 (1986): 11138
De int. Abelard: Des intellections, ed. and trans. Patrick
Morin (Paris: Vrin, 1994)
Dial. Petrus Abaelardus. Dialectica, ed. Lambert de
Rijk, 2nd ed. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1970)
EDA Epistolae duorum amantium: Briefe Abaelards und
abbreviations xv
Heloises? ed. Ewald Konsgen (Leiden: Brill,

1974); trans. Neville Chiavaroli and Constant
J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and
Abelard (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999)
Ed. Por./ed. Cat./ed. Editio super Porphyrium, Glossae in Categorias,
Per./ed. Div. Editio super Aristotelem, De interpretatione, de
divisionibus, ed. Mario Dal Pra, Pietro Abelardo:
Scritti di Logica (Rome 1954; 2nd ed., 1969), 1
203
Ep. IIVIII Ed. J. T. Muckle, The Personal Letters between
Abelard and Helose, MS 15 (1953): 4794
[Ep. IIV]; ed. J. T. Muckle, The Letter of
Helose on the Religious Life and Abelards
First Reply, MS 17 (1955): 24081 [Ep. VI
VII]; ed. T. P. McLaughlin, Abelards Rule for
Religious Women, MS 18 (1956): 24192;
ed. Eric Hicks, La vie et les epistres Pierres
Abaelart et Heloys sa fame 1 (Paris: Honore
Champion, 1991) [HC, Ep. IIVII]
Ep. IXXIV Peter Abelard. Letters IXXIV, ed. Edme Smits
(Groningen: [privately published], 1983)
Epithalamica Epithalamica: An Easter Sequence by Peter
Abelard, ed. Chrysogonus Waddell, Musical
Quarterly 72 (1986): 23971
Exp. Hex. Expositio in Hexaemeron, PL 178: 731784; Ab-
elards Expositio in Hexameron, ed. Eligius-
Marie Buytaert, Antonianum 43 (1968): 163
94
Exp. Or. Dom./ The Expositio Orationis Dominicae Multorum
Symb. Ap./. legimus orationes, ed. Charles S. F. Burnett,
Symb. Ath Revue benedictine 95 (1985): 6072; Expositio
Symboli Apostolorum and Expositio Symboli S.
Athanasii, PL 178: 61732
Gl. sec. vocales Glossae secundum vocales, ed. Carmelo Ottavi-
ano, Fontes Ambrosiani 3 (Florence, 1933)
HC Abelard: Historia calamitatum, ed. Jacques Mon-
frin (Paris: Vrin, 1959)
Hymn. Par. Peter Abelards Hymnarius Paraclitensis, ed. Joseph
Szoverffy, 2 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Classical Fo-
lio Editions, 1975); Hymn Collections from the
Paraclete, ed. Chrysogonus Waddell, Cistercian
xvi abbreviations
Liturgy Series 89, 2 vols. (Gethsemani Ab-

bey, Trappist, Ky.: Cistercian Publications,
1989)
Instit. nostrae The Paraclete Statutes. Institutiones Nostrae: Intro-
duction, Edition, Commentary, Cistercian Lit-
urgy Series 20 (Gethsemani Abbey, Trappist,
Ky.: Cistercian Publications, 1987)
LI sup. Por./sup. Logica Ingredientibus [super Porphyrium, super
Praed./sup. Per. Praedicamenta Aristotelis, super Periermeneias],
ed. Bernhard Geyer, Peter Abaelards Philoso-
phische Schriften, BGPMA 21.13 (191927);
LI super Periermeneias, ed. Lorenzo Minio-
Paluello, Twelfth Century Logic: Texts and
Studies II: Abaelardiana inedita (Rome: Edizioni
di Storia e Letteratura, 1958)
LI sup. Top. Logica Ingredientibus super Topica glossae, ed.
Mario Dal Pra, Pietro Abelardo: Scritti di Log-
ica, 2nd ed. (Rome, 1969), 205330; ed.
Karin Margareta Fredborg, Abelard on Rhet-
oric, in Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West
11001540, ed. Constant J. Mews, Cary J.
Nederman, and Rodney M. Thomson (Brepols:
Turnhout, 2003), 6280.
LNp Logica Nostrorum petitioni sociorum, ed. B.
Geyer, Peter Abaelards Philosophische Schriften,
BGPMA 21.4 (2nd ed., 1973)
Planctus Pietro Abelardo: Planctus, ed. and trans. Massimo
Sannelli (Trento: La Finestra, 2002)
Problemata Problemata Heloissae, PL 178: 677730
Scito teipsum Scito teipsum, ed. Rainer M. Ilgner, CCCM 190
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2001); Peter Abelards
Ethics, ed. and trans. David Edward Luscombe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)
Sent. Secundum magistrum Petrum sententie, ed. L.
Minio-Paluello, Twelfth Century Logic:Texts
and Studies II: Abaelardiana inedita (Rome,
1958), 11121
Sent. P. A. Sententie magistri Petri Abelardi (Sententie Her-
manni), ed. Sandro Buzzetti (Florence: La
Nuova Italia, 1983)
abbreviations xvii
Sent. Parisienses Sententie Parisienses, ed. A. M. Landgraf, Ecrits

theologiques de lecole dAbelard (Louvain: Spi-
cilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1934)
Sermo 133 Sermones, PL 178: 379610; [Sermones 2, 4, 14,
26, 32, 34] ed. Paula di Santis, I Sermoni di
Abelardo per le monache del Paracleto, Medieva-
lia Lovaniensia I.31 (Louvain: Peeters, 2003)
SN Peter Abailard, Sic et Non, ed. Blanche Boyer
and Richard McKeon (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 197677)
Sol. Soliloquium, ed. Charles S. F. Burnett, Peter Ab-
elard, Soliloquium: A Critical Edition, Studi
Medievali, 3rd ser., 25 (1984): 85794.
TChr Theologia Christiana, ed. E. M. Buytaert, CCCM
12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969)
tsch/TSch Theologia Scholarium, ed. E. M. Buytaert and
C. J. Mews, CCCM 13 (Turnhout: Brepols,
1987) [tsch: recensiones breuiores; TSch: re-
censiones longiores]
TSum Theologia Summi boni, ed. E. M. Buytaert and
C. J. Mews, CCCM 13 (Turnhout: Brepols,
1987)
Works of Other Writers
Bernard, SBO Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, 8 vols.

(Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 195777)
Boethius, In Cat. In Categorias Aristotelis libri quatuor, PL 64:159
294
Boethius, In Isagog. In Isagogen Porphyrii Commenta, ed. G. Schepss
and S. Brandt, CSEL 48 (Vienna-Leipzig,
1906)
Boethius, In Per. Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Periermeneias,
ed. C. Meiser, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1877, 1880)
Bouquet, Recueil M. Bouquet, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de
la France, 24 vols. (Paris, 17381904)
Chron. Maur. La Chronique de Morigny (10951152), ed. Leon
Mirot (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1912)
xviii abbreviations
Gerland, Dialectica Garlandus Compotista, Dialectica, ed. Lambert

Marie de Rijk (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1959)
John, Metalogicon John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. J. B. Hall,
CCCM 98 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991)
Otto, Gesta Friderici Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris, ed.
Georg Waitz and Bernard von Simson, MGH
Scripta rerum germanicarum in usu scho-
larum, 3rd ed. (Hannover: Hahnsche Buch-
handlung, 1912; repr. 1978)
ABELARD AND HELOISE
Introduction
P eter Abelard (10791142) and Heloise (d. 1164) are two of the most
celebrated and controversial personalities of twelfth-century Europe.
Their lives are well known through the Historia calamitatum, or History of
My Calamities, as well as through an exchange of letters between Heloise
and Abelard that always follows the Historia calamitatum in the manuscript
tradition. For over eight hundred years, these two personalities have func-
tioned as mythic gures onto whom a variety of images and ideals have
been projected relating to reason and authority, love and renunciation,
wisdom and religion. Yet the actual ideas that attracted their attention
have tended to be little understood, except through gross simplications.
Abelard has regularly been typecast by his critics, most inuentially by
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090/911153), as a clever dialectician who never
acquired spiritual depth as a theologian. Readers of the Historia calami-
tatum sometimes nd Abelard a difcult personality, overcondent in his
own skills. They may dislike the way he seems to abuse the trust of Heloise
and then seems to neglect her after she enters the religious life, at his
behest. Others admire the brilliance of his analytic capacity, the brazen-
ness with which he attacks authority, and the passion with which he
declares his feelings.
Heloise, by contrast, generally attracts a more sympathetic response,
although more for her declarations of seless love than as a thinker about
ethics. She has long been admired as a woman of great learning, although
opinions have varied greatly about her attitude toward the religious life.
3
4 abelard and heloise
Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny (ca. 10941156), speaks glowingly

about her piety and religion.1 Yet when Jean de Meun (d. 1302) came
across her exchange with Abelard and summarized part of their contents
in Le Roman de la rose, he ignored the monastic dimension of her role as
abbess of the Paraclete and focused instead on one aspect of her letters,
namely, her rhetorically powerful declaration to Abelard that love was far
more important to her than the external trappings of marriage: If Au-
gustus, as ruler of the world, deigned to honor me with marriage and
conferred the whole world on me to possess in perpetuity, it would seem
to me dearer and more worthy to be called your prostitute than his em-
press.2 Through his presentation within Le Roman de la rose, Jean de
Meun created an enduring image of Abelard and Heloise, not as intel-
lectuals but as lovers: one foolish enough to think that he could combine
love and marriage, the other the embodiment of seless love, such as has
never existed since.3
These images have continued to exercise inuence during the modern
period. In the eighteenth century, Abelard and Heloise were revered as
tragic lovers, who endured adversity in life but were united in death. In
1817, they were the only individuals from the pre-Revolutionary period
whose remains were given a place of honor at the newly founded cemetery
of Pe`re Lachaise in Paris. They were effectively revered as romantic saints,
mythologized as forerunners of modernity, at odds with the ecclesiastical
and monastic structures of their day. They became celebrated more for
rejecting the traditions of the past than for any particular intellectual
achievement. Some skeptics suggested that the letters of Heloise might
have been a male invention, designed to show the eternal conict of
worldly and spiritual love. Given the long history of projecting onto Ab-
elard and Heloise often conicting ideals and concerns, we must distrust
these stereotypes. Is it possible to interpret them not just as friends and
lovers but as two great thinkers in the medieval period of European cul-
ture?
Before answering this question, we must untangle the complex role
that both Abelard and Heloise have played in European literary and in-
tellectual imagination, a role quite different from that played by more
canonical gures associated with scholastic thought, such as St. Anselm,
Peter Lombard, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Even today, images evoked by
the names of Abelard and Heloise are shaped by a complex fusion of
rumors generated about both of them within their own lifetime and a
selective reading of a few of their more famous letters. We also need to
appreciate how a social structure that denied women the opportunity to
teach within educational institutions or to rise to positions of inuence
introduction 5
within the Church shaped the documentary record that has survived.
Because Heloise never became a public gure in the manner of Hildegard
of Bingen (10981179), it might seem that little can be said about her
intellectual achievement. One consequence of the relative paucity of texts
rmly attributed to Heloise (at least when compared to those attributed
to Peter Abelard) is that a few scholars have asked whether she could
really have written those outspoken declarations of love for Abelard that
Jean de Meun found so remarkable. The documentary record presents
many questions of interpretation, not the least of which is that the texts
attributed to Heloise do not survive in manuscripts from the twelfth cen-
tury and are not independently attested by contemporaries. Yet even
though these letters survive only within an edited compilation, there is
no reason to doubt the authenticity of the Historia calamitatum or the
subsequent exchange between Heloise and Abelard. Also worthy of at-
tention is a remarkable collection of over one hundred anonymous love
letters, the Epistolae duorum amantium, exchanged between a brilliant
teacher and his female student. The contrasting ideas about love in these
letters, as also some of their images and technical terms, are very close
indeed to those found in other writings of Abelard and Heloise.4
What is offered here is simply my own interpretation of how a wide
range of texts from the twelfth centuryrelating to dialectic, theology,
and ethicsrelate to each other. There are so many gaps in the surviving
record that the temptation has always been strong for readers to speculate
about those unknown elements, whether in the lives of Abelard and He-
loise or in the schools and monasteries in which they lived. New hy-
potheses always need to be offered in order to challenge existing assump-
tions and to force us to consider new ways of looking at the texts that
have come down to us. Passionate attachment or aversion to the images
we hold of individuals such as Abelard, Heloise, and Bernard of Clairvaux
can cause us to read evidence in selective ways, discarding elements that
we do not like. My argument is that the evolution of Abelards thinking
about language, theology, and ethics is marked by continuity rather than
by rupture and that it cannot be understood apart from the inuence of
Heloise, whose intellectual achievement is much more difcult to identify
within the documentary record. We must also acknowledge the intellec-
tual and literary debts of both Abelard and Heloise to their contempo-
raries. Both of them were inextricably involved in and shaped by the
established religious structures of their day. They also shared a fascination
with the philosophical and literary culture of classical antiquity, wide-
spread among many clerics of their day. Yet the debate that came to a
head at Sens in 1141 should not blind us to perceiving the extent to
which Abelard, Heloise, and Bernard shared a common desire to go be-

yond the outward slogans of religious life. The abbeys of the Paraclete
and of Clairvaux shared more in common than is often realized, even if
they differed in the ways these two communities sought to live out these
ideals. The chapters that follow do not aim to present a denitive account
of the thought of Abelard and Heloise and the circumstances in which
they lived. Rather, they serve to promote discussion and further explo-
ration of some fascinating texts that have come down to us from the
twelfth century.
1
Images of Abelard and Heloise
T here is a mythic quality to the lives of Peter Abelard and Heloise

that has never ceased to fascinate readers of their letters and to pro-
voke controversy about the signicance of their ideas. The outer con-
tours of their lives are well known through Abelards so-called Historia
calamitatum, or History of My Calamities.1 He tells the story of his life as
a moral lesson on how worldly success could lead to disaster while the
most difcult situations could always be turned to the good. He explains
how, after arriving in Paris from his native Brittany around 1100, he es-
tablished himself as a brilliant and controversial teacher, who outshone
both William of Champeaux in dialectic and then Anselm of Laon in
divinity. He devotes much attention to putting his side of the story about
which rumor was rife, his love affair with Heloise. Explaining what hap-
pened as if it were a fable, he presents his behavior as simply the con-
sequence of lust. The love affair became the subject of wide gossip and
was eventually discovered by her uncle, Fulbert, a cleric and Abelards
host. When Heloise became pregnant, Abelard had her escape to Brit-
tany. Abelard endeavored to make amends to her uncle by forcing her
(against her will) into a secret marriage. This failed to placate Fulbert,
who had him castrated. At Abelards behest, they both entered the re-
ligious life, she at the Abbey of Argenteuil and he at the royal Abbey
of St.-Denis.
Abelard explains these events, difcult as they were to accept, as all
serving a higher end. In a similar vein, he argues that the machinations
7
that led to his writing on theology being condemned as heretical at the

Council of Soissons were corrupt but served to cure him of pride, just as
the castration had cured him of lust. He devotes the remainder of his
narrative to explaining the background to his foundation of the oratory
of the Paraclete. The narrow-mindedness of the monks of St.-Denis had
driven him to escape to the territory of Champagne, where he established
a philosophical retreat, dedicated initially to the Holy Trinity but then
more specically to the Paraclete. After a few successful years the com-
munity collapsed, forcing him to accept a position as abbot at a remote
monastery in Brittany. By the working of providence, however, a corrupt
actionSugers expulsion of Heloise and her nuns from Argenteuilhad
a positive outcome. Abelard transferred to Heloise and her community
control over the abandoned oratory. By 1131, the Paraclete had been
granted ofcial recognition by the papacy. While Abelards life was still
uncertain, he was sure that all difculties could be overcome. This at least
is the story as Abelard tells it in his Historia calamitatum, written around
1132.
Much less is known about Heloise, about whose early life we are largely
dependent on the rather remote and enigmatic testimony of Abelard in
his account of their early affair. Ever since Jean de Meun summarized the
story of their love affair within his continuation to Le Roman de la rose
in the thirteenth century, there has been no shortage of attempts to imag-
ine and admire her as a passionate heroine, devoted to Abelard. The
difculty with this fascination in the story of their love affair is that it
has tended to overshadow awareness of Abelard and Heloise as thinkers,
preoccupied by issues of language, theology, and ethics. While Jean de
Meun read the correspondence from the perspective of a very specic
issue, namely, whether true love could ever be compatible with marriage,
Abelards narrative in the Historia calamitatum is itself shaped by pro-
foundly theological concerns. It is addressed to an unidentied friend (per-
haps indirectly Heloise herself), then experiencing great difculty, in the
expectation that this friend will nd comfort from the message that all
suffering ultimately serves a higher end, and that God never ceases to
provide consolation through the Holy Spirit, the comforter or Paraclete.
In her initial response, Heloise declares that she is not satised by his
attempt to provide consolation, or by his account of their relationship as
driven by lust, and insists on the purity and selessness of her love for
him. She closes the letter by declaring that she should write to him in
the religious life as much as he used to write to her in the past, when
they were lovers.2 Abelard, by contrast, prefers that she dwell on the
religious ideals to which she is committed in the monastic life, and he
images of abelard and heloise 9
composes, at her behest, extensive treatises and liturgical texts for Heloise
and her community.
In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard shapes his narrative to show how
the working out of his own life itself followed an inner logic, as the
unfolding of the divine will through the most unpalatable and unjust
situations. Reading the text literally, we can easily assume that this is the
writing of an individual with an aggressive and difcult personality, driven
in his youth by debauchery and pride as well as by enduring suspicion
that others are driven by jealousy of his genius. Like other writers of the
period, Abelard plays up certain elements of his past to evoke a moral
lesson. While he gives much more detail about his life than most of his
contemporaries, he glides over many issues, above all his debt to those
who have helped him both politically and intellectually. His major ar-
gument is theological: that Gods consoling goodness can turn the most
difcult situation to a positive end. He presents the story of his life and
his relationship to Heloise in mythical terms. Inheriting a literary topos
from Ovid and Jerome that he has been victimized by the jealousy (in-
vidia) of rivals, he claims that he has learned that all these difculties
serve a greater good. He opens his account by reecting that the story of
one individuals life can often be more powerful than general platitudes:
Often examples stir or soothe human emotions more than words.3 While
his narrative is a carefully crafted text that provides a particular perspec-
tive on the story of the lives of its two central protagonists, it needs to
be read with caution.
The rhetorical framework of the Historia calamitatum makes it danger-
ous to rely only on this account as an objective summary of Abelards
career. It is not particularly concerned with the evolution of Abelards
ideas or his intellectual debts. It is a polemical document in which he
emphasizes not only his own past debauchery, from which he claims to
have been freed by castration, but also the injustice of the accusations
made against his teaching of theology. The Historia calamitatum gives no
record of the way Abelards thinking deepened during the 1130s as a result
of his becoming a spiritual adviser to the Abbey of the Paraclete and
through starting to teach again in Paris at the schools of the Montagne
Ste.-Genevie`ve. This phase of life, perhaps the most intellectually pro-
ductive in his entire career, has to be understood through the prolic
writings that he produced both for Heloise and for his students in Paris
during this decade.
Our understanding of Abelard as a thinker has also been much shaped
by the powerful imagery invoked by Bernard of Clairvaux in a widely
diffused letter that he addressed to Pope Innocent II in 1140/41. Goaded
by William of St.-Thierry, Bernard caricatures Abelard as a self-important

thinker devoted to reason rather than to the love of God. Bernards writ-
ing has been immensely inuential over the centuries in creating the
impression that Abelard always remained a dialectician at heart and never
matured into a serious theologian:
We have in France a former teacher turned new theologist, who from his
earliest youth has dabbled in the art of dialectic and now raves about the
Holy Scriptures. He tries to raise teachings once condemned and silenced,
both his own and others, and to add new ones besides. He who deems to
know everything in heaven above and on earth below apart from I do not
know lifts his face to heaven and gazes on the depths of God, bringing
back to us words that cannot be spoken, which are not lawful for a man
to speak. While he is ready to supply a reason for everything, even those
things that are beyond reason, he presumes against reason and against faith.4
Bernard portrays Abelard as a stereotype of everything that the true in-

tellectual should not be. With no awareness of the arguments that un-
derpin Abelards dialectic, Bernard presents his opponent as someone
who, under the guise of providing reasons to justify belief, argues against
both reason and faith. Drawing on passages brought to his attention by
William of St.-Thierry, Bernard dissects a range of opinions in Abelards
Theologia Scholarium that seem to be manifestly contrary to orthodox
Christian doctrine. In particular he abhors Abelards claim that while God
the Father is full power, God the Son is only a kind of power and the
Holy Spirit no power at all.5 This seems to contradict the claim of the
Athanasian Creed that all three divine persons are equally omnipotent.
Bernard is troubled not only by Abelards apparent claim that the Holy
Spirit is not of the substance of the Father but also by his denition of
faith as estimation or opinion (estimatio), which seems to contradict the
Pauline denition of faith as the substance of things hoped for, the ar-
gument of things that do not appear (Heb. 11:1).6 Abelards account of
the redemption seems to William and Bernard to be even more alarming.
Both quote from a report of his teaching, a so-called book of the sentences
of Master Peter, in which Abelard seems to assert that Christ did not
come to free humanity from any legitimate yoke of the devil.7 If he denies
that humanity was not rightfully held in captivity by the devil, does that
not render unnecessary the death of Christ on the cross? Bernard is out-
raged by Abelards rhetorical question: To whom does it not seem cruel
and wicked that anyone should seek the blood of an innocent, or cannot
it in any way please him for an innocent person to be killed, so that God
has an acceptable death for his Son, so that he could be reconciled
through this death to the whole world?8 Abelard seems to imply that all
Christ achieved through his suffering was to demonstrate an example of
love rather than to free us from the yoke of sin, in his assertion that
[O]ur redemption is that supreme love for us, achieved through the pas-
sion of Christ.9 These are criticisms not of Abelards method but of his
understanding of key doctrines of orthodox Christian belief. Bernard con-
siders that Abelard is gutting the idea of God as a Trinity of three, coequal
persons and abandoning any orthodox sense that Christ came to redeem
mankind from sin.
Bernard has great difculty in nding any common thread to all the
various ideas in Abelards thought other than a perverse desire to chal-
lenge accepted Christian doctrine. He cannot understand Abelard as a
philosopher, except as someone who has dabbled in the art of dialectic
and now raves incoherently about the Scriptures. All that he knows
about Abelards intellectual evolution is that having begun life as a dia-
lectician, he has failed to grasp anything of Christian doctrine or the
spiritual life. Drawing on Pauls warning about false teachers (1 Tim. 6:
20), he describes Abelard as indulging in profane novelties both of words
and of meanings, pursuing novelty for its own sake.10 Anxious to respond
to these accusations, Abelard seeks permission to present his case at a
forthcoming council, to be held at Sens on May 25, 1141. When he
realizes that Bernard had already spoken to the bishops on the eve of the
council, Abelard decides to transfer his case to Rome, prompting Bernard
to write a ood of letters to the pope and the cardinals. Pope Innocent
II issues an ofcial condemnation of Abelard as a heretic, condemning
him to perpetual silence and excommunicating all his followers on July
16, 1141.11
This public controversy made it difcult for contemporaries to gain an
unbiased understanding of what Abelard actually thought about language,
theology, and ethics. Unlike Bernard, Abelard did not have articulate
apologists to put forth a reasoned explanation of his arguments, or a well-
resourced monastic community that could ensure the diffusion of his writ-
ings. His most ardent defenders could also be the most intemperate. Ber-
engar of Poitiers writes a heated attack on Bernards behavior at Sens, but
in it speaks little about Abelards theology.12 Even John of Salisbury, who
followed Abelards introductory lectures on dialectic in 1136/37, never
shows any profound familiarity with Abelards theology. John certainly
admires the broad commitment of Abelard to philosophical learning, and
recalls that the peripatetic of Le Pallet was one of a small cluster of
outstanding teachersalongside Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres,
and William of Concheswho defended the value of the liberal arts: He
was so eminent in logic that he alone was thought to converse with

Aristotle.13 Yet for all his enthusiasm for Abelards capacity to produce
easily accessible explanations of ancient texts, John does not hesitate to
describe specic arguments offered by Abelard as either nave or simply
wrong.14 While John shares Abelards admiration for classical ethics, he
is more sympathetic to the arguments of Gilbert of Poitiers about language
and theology. In the Historia ponticalis, John gives a detailed and nuanced
account of the accusations against Gilbert raised at Reims in 1148, subtly
criticizing Bernard of Clairvaux for not appreciating Gilberts learning and
theological depth. John only alludes briey, however, to Bernards behav-
ior at the Council of Sens in 1141.
The superuity of images, claims, and counterclaims generated by Ab-
elards eagerness to engage in public debate makes it difcult to determine
the underlying threads behind Abelards diverse output. Even twentieth-
century historiography of Abelard has been subtly inuenced by the rhe-
torical arguments of previous centuries. Theologians tend to view Abelard
as a philosopher, in particular as a logician, rather than as one of their
own. Philosophers have concentrated their attention on certain aspects
of Abelards logic but have rarely paid attention to his commentaries on
Scripture or his other writings for Heloise and the nuns of the Paraclete.
As a thinker, he tends to be identied as a man of the schools rather
than as a monk, concerned for the religious community dedicated to the
Paraclete. Scholars interested in Abelards ethical theory tend to consider
such inquiry as separate from his activity as a logician or as a commentator
on Scripture. The cleavage that has developed in the modern period be-
tween philosophy and theological studies has had a serious effect in frag-
menting understanding of Peter Abelard. This tendency to disciplinary
fragmentation is itself a legacy of the increasingly sophisticated intellec-
tual culture of the twelfth century.
With Heloise, we encounter a similar problem. She tends to be per-
ceived and admired more in a secular than in a religious context. As a
woman, she could not become a teacher in her own right except in the
context of the Paraclete. It is thus more difcult to reconstruct the distinct
features of her thought. She became famous for qualities quite different
from those associated with Abelard, namely, piety, wisdom, and patience:
The more she hid herself away in her enclosed cell to give herself more
fully to holy prayers and meditations, the more ardently did outsiders seek
out the advice of her spiritual conversation.15 Heloises refusal to present
a public image of herself to a wider world only encouraged her admirers
to imagine the inner story of her life. In two letters to Heloise, Hugh
Metel (ca. 1080ca. 1150) speaks glowingly of her reputation as a writer:
By composing, by versifying, by renewing familiar words in new combi-

nation, and what is more excellent than everything, you have overcome
womanly weakness and have hardened in manly strength.16 When He-
loise failed to respond to this attery, Hugh sent a second message, pre-
sumably also to no avail. While Heloise does seem to have been an imag-
inative and innovative writer, she steered away from the public stage.
Only after Jean de Meun came across the exchange of letters between
Heloise and Abelard does a shadowy story, largely passed over by twelfth-
century monastic chroniclers, begin to come to life. Jean is interested in
Heloise not as an abbess or as a thinker about ethics, but as a woman
who proclaims the completeness of her love.
Little is known of the books possessed at the Paraclete during the twelfth
century. Most thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts of the corre-
spondence of Abelard and Heloise were copied in a humanist rather than a
monastic milieu, but probably derive from an archetype originally preserved
at the Paraclete. The fullest version of the exchangeincluding Abelards
Rule for the Paraclete and a document, Our Institutions that lays out
monastic practice at the Paraclete, drafted in around 1141 quite possibly
by Heloiseoccurs in full only in a single manuscript (Troyes, Bibl.
mun. 802), perhaps made for the Paraclete, but bought by Robert de
Bardi from the cathedral chapter of Notre-Dame in 1347. In the late
fourteenth century, the Avignon popes had granted indulgences for the
restoration of the Paraclete after its near complete destruction through
war.17 The Troyes manuscript may have been returned to the Paraclete by
1497, when a new abbess, Catherine de Courcelles, had the bodies of
Abelard and Heloise solemnly transferred to places of honor in the newly
constructed abbey church at the Paraclete. The manuscripts prepared for
the occasion, including transcriptions of epitaphs recovered from their
original tomb, reect an image of Abelard and Heloise as virtuous Chris-
tians, subtly different from that given in Le Roman de la rose.
This image of Abelard and Heloise as representing a spirit of monastic
humanism was reinforced by the publication in 1616 of their writings by
Andre Duchesne and Francois dAmboise.18 This volume initially ap-
peared with a preface by Duchesne, who provided a detailed historical
commentary on the Historia calamitatum, but was subsequently reprinted
in that year with a more elaborate preface by dAmboise, as well as with
a Censura from the doctors of the Sorbonne. Abelards writings had been
on the Index of Prohibited Books since 1563 and technically were for-
bidden reading. Neither Duchesne nor dAmboise was particularly inter-
ested in the content of Abelards theology, and they did not include any
of his writings on dialectic in the edition. Rather, they sought to show
that Abelard and Heloise were authentic historical gures who contrib-
uted in a signicant way to French culture in the twelfth century. The
1616 edition challenged an image of Abelard as dialectician and heretic,
widely circulated through the polemical letters of Bernard of Clairvaux,
by emphasizing his fundamental orthodoxy.
Paradoxically, this edition was published at precisely the moment that
the abbess of the Paraclete, Marie IV de la Rochefoucauld (a relation of
Francois dAmboise), was seeking to diminish the presence of Abelard
and Heloise at her abbey by transferring their remains from the main
church to the crypt. Having given many precious manuscripts relating to
the early history of the community to Francois dAmboise, the abbess
quietly gave up all of the liturgical customs that had given the Paraclete
its distinct identity since the twelfth century. She eliminated all mention
of the achievement of its founders in a commentary that she wrote on
the Rule of Benedict, to guide her nuns. In an atmosphere of increasingly
rigid religious orthodoxy in seventeenth-century France, Abelard and He-
loise came to be seen as individuals at odds with ecclesiastical authority.
The renewal of scholarly interest in medieval culture provoked by the
Maurists in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had little im-
pact in improving awareness of Abelard as a thinker, although they did
publish a few hitherto unknown texts such as his Theologia Christiana and
Expositio in Hexaemeron. By contrast, the letters of Heloise fascinated a
non-clerical audience for what they had to say about affairs of the heart.
In 1643, Francois de Grenaille provided some rather free translations of
letters of Heloise within a collection of writings by famous women, both
mythological and historical.19 Enthusiasm for these letters owered in the
late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through a range of literary par-
aphrases of the Historia calamitatum and the accompanying letters of He-
loise to Abelard. Picking up on the literary genre of Ovids Heroides, they
presented Abelard as an amorous philosopher at odds with the dogmatism
of ecclesiastical authority, and Heloise as outspoken in her tragic love for
Abelard. Needless to say, Abelard attracted little interest as a thinker,
while Heloise was admired for her teaching about the purity of love rather
than as the abbess of a religious community.
These attitudes changed signicantly during the early nineteenth cen-
tury, just as the physical remains of Abelard and Heloise were given new
honor at Pe`re Lachaise. In the second volume of his Histoire de France,
published in 1833, Jules Michelet presented Abelard as the hero of the
urban communes, the Breton logician whose proclamation of liberty
threatened the Church, and Heloise as a sign of a new dignity accorded
to women in the twelfth century.20 The key gure in promoting awareness
of Abelard as a thinker was Victor Cousin, who rst published the fruits
of his pioneering research into hitherto unread manuscripts of medieval
logic in 1836.21 In a volume that opened up awareness of medieval phi-
losophy, Cousin provided editions of Abelards previously unknown Sic et
non and Dialectica, and explained scholasticism as a philosophy dened
above all by dialectic. Cousin was not particularly interested in Abelards
theology as such, the only thing one could study at that time, but em-
phasized his critical method. He presented Abelard as the creator of a
system that would eventually be destroyed by Descartes, whom he con-
sidered to be the founder of modern philosophy proprement dit, free from
the constraints of religious dogma.22 Abelard was thus a precursor of the
critical achievement of German philosophy in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century. Cousin saw this scholastic philosophy as fertil-
izing a Europe that was otherwise one in religion. It is impossible to
disguise the latent nationalism behind claims such as One can say that
scholastic philosophy was born in Paris, and that it died there.23 Cousins
commitment to the reform of university education in France, for so long
monopolized by the doctors of the Sorbonne, neatly mirrored his image
of the growth of the schools in twelfth-century Paris, spreading enlight-
enment in a society otherwise under the control of religion.
Cousin understood scholastic philosophy to be dened not by grammar
or rhetoric but by dialectic. It involved the application of reason to the-
ology, but was not identied with theology as such. The core issue of
medieval philosophy he identied as the question, mentioned in passing
in Porphyrys introduction to the Categories of Aristotle, whether a uni-
versal term such as animal or man, predicated collectively of different
individuals, exists in reality (in re) or is simply a spoken utterance (in
voce).24 Cousin established an interpretation of Abelards logic as pre-
eminently concerned with universals that continued to be of great inu-
ence throughout the twentieth century. It sees Abelards discussion of one
particular type of word as foreshadowing modern philosophical suspicion
of references to essences beyond the realm of critical analysis. Cousin
interpreted Abelards account of how he forced William of Champeaux
to modify his teaching of universals in the course of hearing him lecture
on rhetoric as marking Abelards rupture with traditional ontology.
Cousins Ouvrages inedits, followed by the two volumes of Petri Abaelardi
Opera, published in 1849 and 1859, canonized this image of Abelard as
a nominalist dialectician concerned with words and concepts, rather than
as a serious theologian. It was an image ultimately inspired by the powerful
rhetoric of the abbot of Clairvaux. Cousin never commented on any of
Abelards monastic writings. The title of his edition referred only to the
name of Abelard, not of Heloise, a practice followed in 1855 when

the abbe Migne printed an expanded version of the 1616 edition under
the title Opera Petri Abaelardi, without the name of Heloise on the title
page.
Doubts about whether Heloise actually wrote the letters attributed to
her were rst raised in 1806 by Ignaz Fessler and were renewed by J. C.
Orelli in 1844 and Ludovic Lalanne in 1855, all of whom suggested that
the surviving letters may be nothing more than a literary ction.25 The
myth of Heloise as a heroine of outspoken love had reached such extrav-
agant heights by the early nineteenth century that a few scholars sug-
gested that two personal letters to Abelard, evidently modeled on the
Heroides of Ovid, could be a ction composed to promote the story of
their conversion. In the rst major biography to be written about Abelard,
published in 1845, Charles de Remusat presented a more rounded picture
than Cousin of Abelards intellectual achievement, but he reinforced the
practice of considering Abelard as the intellectual and Heloise simply as
the idealized focus of his attention.26 In 1885, Martin Deutsch published
an important study of Abelard as a critical theologian but ignored the
presence of Heloise, on the grounds that the letters attributed to her
might not be authentic.27 Writing in 1904, Henry Adams took for granted
that Heloise was a mythic gure, like Isolde spanning the ages, while
having no doubts about the intellectual achievements of Peter Abelard.28
With the growing inuence in the nineteenth century of the Catholic
intellectual revival, Abelard was judged by Catholic traditionalists to be
less than fully orthodox, a man of reason rather than a reliable exponent
of religious faith. Following the encyclical Aeterni patris of 1879, the
teaching of Thomas Aquinas became dened as a denitive system of
thought in which a xed deposit of faith was analyzed through reason,
always in obedience to the authority of the Church. Where Abelard had
been a symbol of philosophical progress for Cousin and his admirers, he
now came to symbolize the limitations of secular thought. In his place,
Aquinas was presented as the archetypal scholastic, against whom all
other teachers had to be measured. Admirers of Abelard often emphasized
that his major contribution lay in his scholastic method, his use of reason,
rather than his specic theological teachings. At the same time, a number
of scholars raised questions about whether the historical Heloise could
really have been the heroine of love that her admirers made her out to
be, and argued that perhaps the entire correspondence was a monastic
ction, written either by a disciple or entirely by Abelard himself.
The argument that Abelard was fundamentally an orthodox Christian
was given its classic exposition by Etienne Gilson in Helose et Abelard,
rst delivered as lectures to the Colle`ge de France in 193637.29 Never

particularly interested in those discussions about universals that fascinated
Cousin, Gilson focused on Abelard as a moralist who came to understand
the true meaning of Christian conversion. He portrayed Heloise as a her-
oine of pagan grandeur, who never fully came to terms (at least in her
letters) with her situation in the religious life. In an appendix, Gilson
refuted the hypothesis raised by Bernhard Schmeidler that Heloises letters
may all have been written by Abelard by claiming that this failed to
understand the heart of Heloise. Gilsons analysis of the drama of their
relationship as that between an orthodox theologian and a pagan heroine
was itself shaped by a romantic image of Heloise as a woman who lived
for her man. Gilson effectively used Abelard and Heloise as metaphors
for the relationship between a Christian theologian and a pagan world
that was still in need of conversion. The dualism implicit in this inter-
pretation of the letters of Heloise was much criticized by Peter von Moos,
who engaged in a protracted debate with Peter Dronke in the 1970s about
reading her letters as expressions of her heart. Von Moos interprets the
correspondence as a whole as a monastic document, a highly crafted rhe-
torical exemplum about conversion to the religious life. In more recent
writing, he has continued to emphasize the monastic function of the cor-
respondence as a whole.30
The debate about the authenticity of the correspondence provoked by
John Bentons hypothesis that the entire letter collection might have been
forged in the late thirteenth century (rst presented in 1972), or by Ab-
elard himself (a position to which he had reverted by 1979), forced schol-
ars to look afresh at the relationship between the famous letters of Abelard
and Heloise and their other writings, hitherto much neglected, relating
to the monastic life. The long established tendency to focus on Abelard
as a schoolman and Heloise as a tragic heroine effectively screened them
off from their broader monastic context and identity. Readers silently
assumed that for both Abelard and Heloise, monasticism was a prison
that impeded their emergence as protomodern identities. Only during
the 1980s and 1990s did these attitudes begin to change, as a few scholars
looked more at the very signicant monastic documents in the corre-
spondence, notably Heloises criticism of the Rule of Benedict and Abe-
lards two lengthy treatises, on the history of religious women and his
Rule for the Paraclete. It became apparent that Bernard of Clairvaux did
not have a monopoly on the denition of monastic culture in the twelfth
century.
Study of the correspondence of Heloise and Abelard experienced a
new awakening with the growth of interest in categories of gender in the
late twentieth century and a renewed condence that Heloise was indeed
author of the letters attributed to her in the manuscript tradition. A
number of scholars argued that Heloises writings not only expressed de-
votion to Abelard but also criticized a number of his perspectives. Barbara
Newman has taken issue with the absurdity of assuming that Abelard
could have written the letters of Heloise, suggesting that such interpre-
tative strategies in fact extended a process of repression of her identity
already evident within the texts written by Abelard.31 Other studies on
the letters of Heloise attend to the rhetorical strategies evident in her
letters as she seeks to establish an identity distinct from that of Abelard.
There are few studies, however, that give due weight to the originality of
both Abelard and Heloise in the correspondence. Some writers focus on
the monastic dimension of the exchange, particularly evident in Abelards
two lengthy treatises on the religious life, while others focus on Heloise
as a critic of the strategies that Abelard seeks to advance.32 Those who
have questioned the authenticity of her letters have criticized a romantic
idealization of her persona, without always recognizing that these letters
present a set of attitudes quite distinct from those of Abelard.
A similar problem bedevils commentary on Abelards rich and mani-
fold achievement as a philosopher and theologian. Because he has for so
long been interpreted as a forerunner of modernity, whether by admirers
or by critics, scholars have tended to isolate one aspect or another of this
achievement in the light of xed assumptions about the meaning of logica
or theologia. They have often assumed that Abelard is much more of a
philosopher of language, critical of the supposed ontological realism of
thinkers such as St. Anselm and William of Champeaux, than a serious
thinker about ethics or theology.
In 1969 Jean Jolivet attempted to break down this perspective by ex-
ploring both Abelards theory of language and its application to theology.33
He argued that the issue of universals was only part of Abelards theory
of language, according to which words and phrases do not make state-
ments about things (res) but rather signify aspects of their subject, whether
that subject has a concrete existence or is purely hypothetical. Jolivets
analysis focused on Abelards theory of language and its application to
theology rather than on theology per se. Other scholars, such as Albert
Murray, Lief Grane, and Richard Weingart, have been interested in Ab-
elards reinterpretation of traditional Christian theology but have had lit-
tle to say about how it connects to Abelards theory of language. The year
1969 also witnessed the publication of David Luscombes detailed study
of the inuence of Abelards theology in the twelfth-century schools, from
a historical perspective.34
Two books, both published in 1997, epitomize quite different ap-

proaches that can be taken toward Abelard. Michael Clanchy has pro-
duced a highly readable and historically well-informed biography that
considers various aspects of Abelards life (master, logician, lover, theo-
logian, heretic) but focuses above all on his personality as a rebel and
critic of authority.35 By contrast, John Marenbon has written an excellent
study of Abelard as a philosopher both of logic and of ethics.36 He argues
that scholars have considered Abelard merely a critical thinker and have
not appreciated the originality of his ethics. Marenbon interprets Abelard
as initially preoccupied with problems in medieval logic, in particular with
ontology, but then as experiencing a radical shift away from logic to
ethics, which he sees as the foundation of his theology.37 His book is
divided into three sections, dealing in turn with issues of chronology, with
Abelards logic, and with his ethics. The effect of this division is to suggest
that there is a radical rupture in Abelards philosophical evolution from
being a logician to being a theologian, driven by ethical concerns. Like
Clanchy, Marenbon comments in passing on Heloises inuence on Ab-
elards thought on matters of ethics, although not in any systematic
fashion.
The question remains of how we are to reconcile the multitude of
apparently contradictory images that both Abelard and Heloise generated,
both in their own day and down through the centuries. Is Abelards the-
ology simply a cover for his theory of language or his ethics, or can he
be considered as a serious theologian? What inuence did Heloise have
on his intellectual development? How is she different as a thinker? There
is a long tradition of bracketing together both Abelard and Heloise as
fundamentally secular gures, at odds with the dominant religious
traditions of their day, as represented by Bernard of Clairvaux. Post-
Enlightenment distinctions between religious and secular culture have
frequently been imposed on the culture of twelfth-century Europe, so as
to trace the roots of so-called modernity. Abelard is often perceived as a
quintessential rebel, who challenged theological tradition through his
philosophical acumen. Even if one argues that Abelard changed from
being a critic of conventional logic to being a theologian concerned to
justify the beliefs of the establishment, commentators have often assumed
that his theology was simply a vehicle through which he could pursue
non-theological interests, whether in the sphere of language or of ethics.
This perspective tends to detach Abelard from the theological concerns
of his contemporaries. A similar question arises in relation to Heloise.
Was her reputation for piety and religion simply a cover for purely worldly
concerns, or should we read her letters as manifesting a religious intent?
The argument will be pursued in subsequent chapters that far from man-
ifesting rupture and discontinuity, Abelards thought evolved from an early
concern with logica, the theory of language, to growing awareness of both
theology and ethics, in particular under the inuence of Heloise. We need
to avoid imposing a radical dichotomy between secular and religious cul-
ture in studying Abelard and Heloise, or indeed any of their contempo-
raries. Their interest in theology and religious commitment evolved out
of their fascination with secular learning and wisdom, as well as through
the particular circumstances of their own lives.
2
The Early Years

Roscelin of Compie`gne and
William of Champeaux
A belard was born into a family of mixed ancestry living on the frontier
of Brittany adjacent to the territory of the dukes of Anjou. While
his mother, Lucia, was Breton by birth, his father, Berengar, was a Poitevin
who encouraged Abelard to look eastward to pursue his education.1 Men-
tioning nothing of his mother or sisters, Abelard recalls in the Historia
calamitatum that he beneted from the encouragement to study given by
his father, who encouraged all his sons to pursue an education before
learning how to wield arms, and that he then decided to renounce his
rightful inheritance as eldest son and devote himself to study: I aban-
doned completely the court of Mars, so that I could be brought up in the
bosom of Minerva.2 The impression that he gives in the Historia calam-
itatum of being a wandering scholar who studied in a variety of places
before he came to Paris is misleading. We gain a different picture from a
vitriolic letter written by Roscelin of Compie`gne, accusing his former
pupil of forgetting how much benet Abelard had gained from his early
studies, from being a boy to being a young man.3 Roscelin boasted that
he held canonries not just at Tours and Loches, where you sat for so
long as the least of my disciples, but also at Besancon, an important
imperial city in Burgundy, near the Alps. He even claimed the support
of Rome, which willingly receives me and listens to me. Roscelin em-
bodied a new type of teacher in the late eleventh century, a secular cleric,
free to travel to wherever his educational services were in demand. He
provided the young Peter Abelard with a role model to emulate. While
21
Abelard would subsequently criticize many inadequacies in the teaching

of Roscelin, there was much that he learned from his rst teacher. Above
all, Roscelin introduced Abelard to the study of what Aristotle had to
say about dialectic as a discipline that dealt with the principles underpin-
ning language and argument.
Abelard would also certainly have gained from Roscelin the elements
of religious instruction and have absorbed something of his masters at-
titude toward Christian doctrine. In 1090, Roscelin had been accused by
Anselm of Bec (10331109) of holding that the three divine persons were
separate entities (res), as God the Father did not himself become incar-
nate in Christ. After being told about Roscelins argument by John of
Tusculumthen assisting Fulco, bishop of BeauvaisSt. Anselm com-
posed a treatise, De incarnatione Verbi, to refute what he considered to be
Roscelins dangerous argument about the distinction between God the
Father and God the Son. The Beauvais connections of Roscelins critics
suggest that prior to moving to the territory of Anjou, Roscelin had taught
at Beauvais, where he was aligned with forces opposed to the family of
Fulco of Bec. Theological accusations reinforced an internal political dis-
pute between clerics of Beauvais and monks from the Norman abbey of
Bec, then trying to establish a foothold in the French kingdom.4 In a
strange way, the vicissitudes of Roscelins career anticipate many of the
difculties faced by Abelard, who would himself face accusations of heresy
at another Church council, in Soissons in 1121.
According to an entry preserved within a manuscript of Beauvais ca-
thedral in the early twelfth century, Roscelin the grammarian be-
queathed a remarkably rich range of books, covering both the liberal arts
and divinity: Augustines Homilies on John and De doctrina Christiana, Pris-
cians Grammatical Institutes, Macrobiuss Dream of Cicero, Boethiuss On
Arithmetic and On the Consolation of Philosophy, an unidentied Dialectica,
Ciceros De inventione, and the poetry of Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Ovid,
and Statius, as well as a book of tropes. The copy of Augustines Homilies
on John is a particularly ancient manuscript, copied at Luxueil in the
seventh century.5 While we cannot be certain that this Roscelin is to be
identied with Roscelin of Compie`gne, the bequest demonstrates the in-
terest of a grammaticus in all the arts of language, as well as divinity. It
provides an excellent guide to the kind of texts that the young Abelard
would have been expected to study in the late eleventh century. Although
Roscelin was vilied by St. Anselm for his dialectic this was only one of
the disciplines that he would have been expected to teach. Under Ros-
celins tuition, Abelard would have been expected to read the great Ro-
man poets, as well as core treatises of Priscian on grammar and of Cicero
the early years 23
on rhetoric. In many schools and abbeys of the Loire Valley during the
late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, there was great interest in the
poetry of Ovid, imitated most brilliantly by Baudri of Bourgueil (1046
1130) and Marbod of Rennes (10351123). The books bequeathed to
Beauvais include all the major poets popular in their generation, as well
as writings of the major theorists on grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric,
alongside some core texts of Augustine on divinity.
The Emergence of Vocalist Dialectic,

10701120
Of these disciplines, it was dialectic, the study of rational argument, that

particularly attracted the attention of the young Abelard. Traditionally,
the study of philosophy was seen as encompassing three major areas: logica
(the study of language, involving both rhetoric and dialectic, with gram-
mar as its necessary foundation), physica (the study of nature), and ethica
(the study of ethics). In practice, the fragments that survived of the clas-
sical philosophical tradition in the Latin West were heavily oriented to-
ward the arts of language and away from reection on the natural world.
Ethics was not a discipline in its own right, but was largely studied by
reading Latin authors as part of grammatica. Seneca, a favorite author of
Heloise, is not mentioned in the library catalogue of Roscelinus gramma-
ticus. Shaped by the particular philosophical interests of Boethius, as in-
terpreted by Roscelin, Abelard applied himself as a young student to di-
alectic, as expounded in Porphyrys Isagoge or Introduction to the Categories,
Aristotles Categories (Praedicamenta) and Periermeneias, and four treatises
of Boethius: De differentiis topicis on different forms of argument, De syl-
logismo categorico and De syllogismo hypothetico on syllogisms, and De divi-
sione on subdivision and denition. These texts, the so-called logica vetus,
provided the standard introduction to the study of rational argument prior
to the diffusion during the 1130s of other texts of Aristotle on the subject,
notably the Prior Analytics, the Sophistical Refutations, and the Topics.
While Abelard was aware of references of Boethius to these and other
texts of Aristotle, he had to imagine what they might have contained.6
By 1120 Abelard had come across rare copies of the Prior Analytics and
Sophistical Refutations, perhaps through his learned contemporary Thierry
of Chartres, but he never gained any detailed understanding of their con-
tent.7 Abelard respected the study of natural science and once tried to
study arithmetica under Thierry, but without great success. His expertise
was in handling words.
The curriculum Roscelin followed had been established by Gerbert of

Aurillac at Reims in the late tenth century. Gerbert had required that
the study of dialectic be based not on Augustines writing on dialectic but
on Porphyrys Isagoge and Aristotles Categories and Periermeneias, as trans-
lated and explained by Boethius. Roscelin, who had himself studied at
Reims in the mid-eleventh century, passed on to Abelard this tradition
of respect for peripatetic philosophical tradition. The basic elements of
Aristotelian thought were transmitted to the Latin West through the
translations and commentaries of Boethius in the sixth century. Porphyry
had introduced Aristotles Categories by discussing ve classes of predica-
ble, or terms able to be predicated of a subject, in the form a hierarchical
tree that begins with the most general types of predicate (genus, such
as animal, and species, such as man, a rational animal) and descends to
what is most specic: differentia, or differentiating characteristic (such as
being rational or not); proprium, or that which is proper to a single species,
such as a man being two footed; accidens, or that which is a mutable
external feature of a subject. It is a philosophical framework that gives
priority to universal categories over supercial external accidents. While
Porphyry raised in passing the question whether these predicables are
words or are based in reality, Boethiuss allusion to universal things as
the goal of philosophical enquiry articulated an assumption that a uni-
versal existed beyond the realm of language.
In the Categories, Aristotle explains the different ways in which names
are used before listing ten basic categories (praedicamenta), beginning with
the most general, that of substance, in turn distinguished into rst sub-
stances (a particular man) and second substances (the species man pred-
icated of several individuals). Aristotle then analyzes quantity, relatives,
quality, opposites, priority, simultaneity, movement, and possession as all
fundamental categories of discourse. Boethius explains that Aristotle deals
with the rst names of things, and about words signifying things (de
primis rerum nominibus, et de vocibus res signicantibus).8
Aristotles Periermeneias was always seen as the more difcult text be-
cause it deals with the meaning of nouns, verbs, phrases, and the different
ways in which a proposition can be used to imply afrmation and nega-
tion, as well as necessity and possibility. (Proposition is here used in the
classical sense of a statement, rather than of that which is put forward by
a statement, as used by modern logicians.)9 In commenting on the Per-
iermeneias, Boethius asserts that all discussion relates to three issues: the
things which we perceive through the reasoning of the mind and discern
in understanding, the understandings through which we learn about
things, and the words by which we signify what we grasp in understand-
the early years 25
ing.10 Following Porphyry, Boethius bequeathed to Latin philosophical

vocabulary an antithesis between vox (utterance) and res (thing), that
would be of great inuence in shaping the terms of subsequent debate
about whether categories, propositions or statements, and arguments, were
primarily words or whether they signied real things. Boethius could not
avoid drawing on vocabulary, Stoic in origin, about the meaning of words
as things. Augustine had taught that all teaching is about things or about
signs, but things are discussed through signs. Words are a particular kind
of sign, that signify some res.11 The preference of Boethius and Augustine
for using res to denote what was signied by language conveys the im-
pression that real things exist beyond the realm of discourse.
Roscelin of Compie`gne was one of a group of teachers known as vocales
for their insistence that dialectic concerned words (voces) rather than
things. This emphasis had many implications for the theory of language.
In the mid-twelfth century, Otto of Freising claimed that Roscelin was
the rst in our time to institute the teaching of words [sententiam vocum]
in logic. John of Salisbury similarly identied Roscelin with the view
that a universal category was a word (vox).12 In his De incarnatione Verbi,
St. Anselm claims that Roscelin is only one of a breed: one of those
modern dialecticians who claim that universal substances are nothing but
the puff of an utterance and who cannot understand color to be other
than a physical body or the wisdom of man to be something different
from the soul.13 He accuses such teachers of outing the teaching of
Boethius that true philosophical reason rises above both the senses and
the imagination to grasp the true character of a universal idea, such as
that man is a two-footed rational animal, which no-one would deny is
a thing. While such polemical claims create the impression that these
dialecticians had broken away from mainstream philosophical tradition,
they were simply wishing to read Porphyrys Isagoge in the light of Aris-
totles claim that genera and species were rst of all signifying words (vo-
ces) rather than things in themselves.
Some insight into the kind of vocalist dialectic taught by Roscelin may
be gained from the Dialectica of Gerland of Besancon (ca. 1080ca. 1150;
not to be confused with the eleventh-century Garland the Computist, to
whom the Dialectica was once attributed). As Roscelin held one of his
canonries at Besancon, he could have taught Gerland, who wrote his
Dialectica in the early twelfth century without knowledge of Abelards own
treatise of the same name.14 Unlike Abelard, Gerland makes only occa-
sional reference to the opinions of those with whom he disagrees, such
as those who say that being is a single genus of all things, and never
overtly challenges his teachers.15 His major concern is to help students
understand basic precepts of dialectic, given the burdensome and thus

less comprehensible sayings of Aristotle, as well as the rather diffuse teach-
ing, and thus less comprehensible teaching, of Boethius . . . according to
our own views and those of our teachers.16 Gerland organizes his Dialec-
tica into six books, all about different parts of speech: simple words (de
vocibus incomplexis), or the basic categories of discourse as dened by Por-
phyry; complex words (de vocibus complexis), or different types of cate-
gorical statement, such as every man is an animal (true) or every man
is a stone (false); the single and the multiple senses of a proposition;
different forms of argument (de topicis differentiis); and, nally, categorical
and hypothetical syllogisms. Gerland does not consider universals as such,
but rather looks at words (voces) as the building blocks of all dialectic,
the purpose of which is to distinguish truth from falsehood.17 Thus when
he discusses substance, he explains that what Aristotle calls rst sub-
stances are individual substances, such as a particular man, while what he
calls second substances are species, such as man. Following Aristotle,
he is quite clear that individuals are more worthily called substances than
species and genera.18 Gerlands major focus is on the topics, which he
interprets as the rules of inference underpinning different forms of argu-
ment. He sees the task of dialectic as to identify the maxim or general
proposition on which any correct deduction must be based, dening it
not in a categorical form (as in what is predicated of a genus is predicated
of a species) but as a hypothetical statement (if X is predicated of a genus
. . . ).19 The hypothetical statement describes a relationship between genus
and species as words, functioning as a template for any argument, no
matter how absurd, rather than as things. Gerland may have been directly
familiar with the Topics of Aristotle, also known to Thierry of Chartres,
but not widely studied until the mid-twelfth century.20
A characteristic feature of these vocalist dialecticians in the late elev-
enth and early twelfth centuries, subsequently picked up by Abelard, is a
tendency to use their own name or that of their contemporaries by way
of example in their lectures. In glosses from Erfurt, for example, the name
Arnulf is used, perhaps indicating that their author is Arnulf of Laon,
another dialectician accused by conservative contemporaries of subverting
traditional dialectic.21 Gerland invokes the phrase Gerland is a good
dialectician to explain that this could have several meanings, if good
is also taken to refer to something other than being good at dialectic. He
is fond of examples that students will remember. For example, to show
how a word can denote a passive or experienced quality, he suggests, Just
as sweetness is inferred in the mouth of Avelina from honey, so the sweet-
ness of the mouth of Avelina brings sweetness in the mouth of Gerland
the early years 27
when she kisses him.22 To show how an argument can be based on two
accidents or non-essential features that might occur together, as in con-
gress preceding love, Gerland refers again to Avelina: If Gerland fre-
quently approaches the house of Warengold, he also loves the beautiful
Avelina. In another illustration, he invokes the names Roscilinus and
Trudbaldus.23 Whether real or imagined, such examples show how vocalist
dialecticians seek to present principles discussed by Aristotle with a
greater sense of the specic individual than Boethius.
In part, this interest in voces was stimulated by the inuence of an
extended commentary or Glosule on Books IXVI of the Grammatical
Institutes of Priscian that started to circulate in both monastic and cathe-
dral libraries in northern France by the late 1070s.24 Applying dialectical
categories to grammatica, this commentary is particularly concerned to
distinguish the causa behind each vox in Latin discourse. It frequently
distinguishes the etymology of a word from its philosophical root and
emphasizes that language is an artifact of human imposition, knowledge
of which grows from generation to generation. Its author argues that one
must always distinguish between homo as a word (vocalis) from homo as a
real thing (realis). Drawing on Aristotles teaching in the Categories, he
renes Priscians denition of a noun as that which signies a substance
with a quality by arguing that a noun names a substance, but signies
a quality.25 In other words, homo does not signify a universal substance
but rather the quality of a particular substance, namely, that of being a
man. A verb similarly does not signify a thing (res) in a subject, only that
an action or passion inheres in a subject.
The author of the Glosule is more consciously academic in his approach
to language than St. Anselm, who was sufciently troubled by questions
that some monks were raising about the meaning of words that he com-
posed his De grammatico. He responded specically to an issue raised by
this author: Did a word such as grammaticus signify a quality (being lit-
erate), or a substance (a literate person)?26 Without following the teaching
of the Glosule that a noun names rather than signies a specic subject,
Anselm argues that we must consider whether the meaning of a noun
derives through itself (per se) or through something else (per aliud). Our
only clue to the identity of the author of the Glosule on Priscian is a
colophon identifying him as John, by the grace of God. One possibility
is that he is John of Reims, a celebrated grammaticus who left Reims in
1077 to became a monk at St.-Evroul in Normandy. Frequent internal
references to Reims suggest that this commentary was initially produced
in this city, perhaps in the 1070s.
The Glosule survives in a number of recensions, perhaps the result of
different masters developing its teachings in the late eleventh and early
twelfth centuries. The work focuses on analyzing the words or voces on
which all discourse has to be based. Nuancing the teaching of Priscian
with greater awareness of Aristotles thoughts on categories, it emphasizes
that all voces are utterances of human imposition, and that a noun is a
word that refers to a specic substance but signies something of its qual-
ity. Its denitions came to be used to support a wide range of positions
in the teaching of dialectic. Its discussions of nouns, prepositions, the
substantive verb, and other types of verbs set the agenda for discussion of
voces in the schools of northern France and Normandy for some fty years,
until surpassed by the commentaries of William of Conches in the 1120s
and Peter Helias in the 1150s.27 In the early twelfth century, teachers of
many different intellectual backgrounds, whether labeled by their critics
as vocalist or realist, would draw on ideas within this commentary on
Priscian.
William of Champeaux (ca. 10601122)
Abelard came to Paris around 1100 to study under the most eminent
teacher of the day, William of Champeaux. He acknowledged that Wil-
liam was an authority in dialectic, both in reputation and in fact. William
was one of a small group of reform-minded clerics in Paris, eager to see
stricter standards placed on cathedral canons and strongly critical of sec-
ular control of ecclesiastical positions. William was far more widely known
as a teacher than Roscelin of Compie`gne, having studied at Laon prior
to teaching in Paris. Whereas Anselm of Laon had a great reputation in
the study of Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, William of Cham-
peaux was much more competent in both dialectic and rhetoric and was
also more prepared to discuss abstract theological questions. Unlike An-
selm of Laon, William seems to have known the writings of Anselm of
Canterbury, who was in contact with friends within the cathedral chapter
of Notre-Dame, as well as with Bishop Galo of Paris (11041115), in the
early years of the twelfth century.28
Williams reputation was rst and foremost that of a teacher, who in
his early career produced a student manual, Introductiones dialecticae, that
survives in two different versions.29 He denes the discipline in Boethian
terms as the science of nding the principles on which arguments are
based and of judging argument through the syllogism.30 William has a
clear sense of the distinct roles of each component discipline of logica:
the early years 29
Grammar deals with correct speech, rhetoric with persuasion, dialectic

with distinguishing truth from falsehood.31 These Introductiones consider
the various issues dealt with in Aristotles Periermeneias: the word (vox),
the phrase (oratio), the categorical and hypothetical proposition, and the
rules of inference on which all argument is based. Even forty years later,
John of Salisbury remembered William with esteem for dening the sci-
ence of the topics well, even if imperfectly as the science of nding the
middle term of an argument.32 A distinctive feature of Williams teaching
was his interest in what he calls the medium that connects the specic
terms in any argument. William uses medium to refer to the universal rule,
expressed in the form of a maximal proposition or axiom, such as as
often as anything is predicated universally of anything, so is a predicate
predicated of it in particular, through which any argument is mediated.33
Both versions of Williams Introductiones are largely concerned with the
particular topics or rules on which types of inference are based. William
was reported to hold that a topic (locus) is a thing insofar as it describes
a general relationship between genus and species that generates the senses
of all the arguments to which it is applied and thus is a proposition with
multiple meanings.34
William was an authority on both dialectic and rhetoric. He composed
an inuential series of glosses on Porphyry and Aristotle, largely depend-
ent on Boethius.35 Unlike those of Abelard, they never identify their
author as William, who is loyal to Boethian vocabulary in explaining that
Porphyrys predicables refer to ve different things.36 Revising these
glosses, very likely in response to the arguments of Abelard, William ac-
knowledges that there are those who interpret them as words (voces) and
refuse to admit that a thing (res) could ever be predicated of a subject.
He recognizes vocalist thinking without engaging in heated polemic
against their position. He does not present a particularly sophisticated
denition of universals beyond suggesting that a species is the material
essence shared by different individuals distinguished by accidents, the po-
sition that Abelard forced him to modify around 1109. William also com-
posed commentaries on Ciceros De inventione and the Rhetorica ad
Herennium in which he frequently refers to the teaching of grammar and
rhetoric in Laon. Williams way of teaching rhetoric seems to have been
more informed by dialectic than that of Master Manegold (of Lauten-
bach?), with whose commentary on Cicero William was familiar.37 He
follows Boethian vocabulary, in turn dependent on both Augustine and
Cicero, in referring to the meaning of a proposition as a thing (res).
Dialectic formulates universal principles about realities that exist beyond
the world of language and is separate from both grammar, concerned with
the rules of correct speech, and rhetoric, the art of persuasive speaking.
Both dialectic and rhetoric are part of logica, the study of language.
Within the space of a few years, the young Peter Abelard started to
argue with William of Champeaux, introducing vocalist ideas that he had
absorbed from Roscelin of Compie`gne. Abelard also gained support from
Stephen of Garlande, archdeacon of Paris and later royal chancellor for
much of the reign of Louis VI (11081137), and with extensive connec-
tions in the region of Orleans and the Loire Valley. Stephens brothers
held powerful positions in the royal court. Through their help, Abelard
established a school at the royal palace at Melun, perhaps in 1102/3, after
which he moved for a short time to Corbeil, also a royal palace, but closer
to Paris.
In 1104, Galo, formerly provost of the canons regular of St.-Quentin,
in Beauvais, was appointed bishop of Paris, leading to the temporary oust-
ing from court of Stephen of Garlande and his brothers. At about this
time, William of Champeaux was appointed to the cathedral chapter and
made an archdeacon of Paris, alongside Stephen of Garlande. In this
capacity, William accompanied Bishop Galo to a council held at Troyes
in 1107, where the assembled ecclesiastics promulgated strict reforming
decrees, condemning the practice of simony, as well as sexual malpractice,
and castigating clerics who followed such degenerate fashions as long hair,
tight-tting shirts, and pointed shoes.38 In that same year, William assisted
his bishop in expelling nuns from the Abbey of St.-Eloi, an old, estab-
lished community physically adjacent to the royal palace on the Ile-de-
la-Cite, and replacing them with monks. The aging monarch, Philip I,
was forced to renounce all carnal relations with Bertrada, whom Bishop
Galo refused to recognize as queen. During these years of political distur-
bance, Abelard decided to return to his home region because of over-
work, and then studied under those who occupied themselves with di-
alectic.39 While we do not know whether he returned to study under
Roscelin at Tours or perhaps listened to other teachers in towns of the
Loire Valley, these years (11051108) provided a crucial time during
which Abelard could develop his thinking independently of William of
Champeaux.
Abelard returned to Paris soon after the death of Philip I and the
accession of the young king, Louis VI, in 1108. Stephen of Garlande and
his brothers had already returned to inuence at court. The cause of ec-
clesiastical reform being pushed by Galo and William of Champeaux
seemed to have temporarily stalled. Shortly after Louiss accession, Wil-
liam resigned his post at Notre-Dame in order to follow a more austere
the early years 31
way of life, that of a canon regular following the Rule of St. Augustine,
at the church of St.-Victor, not far from the cathedral on the left bank
of the Seine.40 An admirer reports that in his view William is the most
accomplished instructor in every branch of learning of all the men of the
present day . . . for the sweetness of his words and the profundity of his
thought seem to transcend human ability.41 Abelard was much more cyn-
ical, and would accuse William of Champeaux of adopting a stricter way
of life to help him gain ecclesiastical promotion. This was the situation
in which he challenged William in the course of delivering lectures on
rhetoric. Abelard later recalled the event as a decisive moment in the
evolution of his career. He forced William to modify his original opinion
that a species was essentially the same thing in different individuals and
to admit that a species was a thing that was shared indifferently (indiffer-
enter) in different individuals. Abelard had not yet developed his own
distinct position on universals. He was insisting that William concede the
point emphasized by the Glosule on Priscian that there was no common
essence shared between different individuals of the same species. They
were not different, rather than of the same essence. The Glosule on
Priscian had adopted a similar position in holding that different articu-
lations of the word man were considered as one word only through
similitude, not through identity of essence.42 William subsequently incor-
porated this more sophisticated understanding of identity through non-
difference into his discussion of identity and difference within the persons
of the Trinity. Roscelin himself had invoked a phrase of Boethius to de-
fend the idea that the three persons of the Trinity were the same through
non-difference (per indifferentiam) to protect the distinct identities of Fa-
ther, Son, and Holy Spirit. William was obliged to acknowledge the con-
tribution to logical argument made by vocalist discussion, while contin-
uing to maintain his traditional view that a species was still a thing.
Abelard recalls that from this moment on, Williams authority in dialectic
started to decline, and that some students who had followed William now
transferred to his own school. Whether the decline in Williams inuence
was quite as great as Abelard claims in the Historia calamitatum is not
certain.
Sometime after this disputation, Williams unnamed successor at the
cathedral school offered his position to Abelard, who tells us that William
of Champeaux was so angered by this that he had Abelard removed from
the position and replaced by an unnamed rival, renowned for his lectures
on Priscian. Abelard returned to teaching at Melun, but soon moved his
school to the Montagne Ste.-Genevie`ve, presumably at the invitation of
Stephen of Garlande, who had been made dean of its abbey (a community
of secular canons) by Louis VI around 1108/9, about the same time as

William of Champeaux moved to St.-Victor. Unlike William, Stephen of
Garlande did not resign his position within the cathedral chapter or give
up the considerable property that he had acquired as a cleric. This was
the situation in which Abelard says that he lay siege to the teacher at
the cathedral school of Notre-Dame. Despite the support of William of
Champeaux, this teacher subsequently left the cathedral to become a
monk.43 During these years, Goswin, a student of Joscelin of Vierzy, ac-
costed Abelard in debate at the school of Ste.-Genevie`ve. Goswin was
urged to study a certain commentary (undoubtedly the Glosule) on Pris-
cians Grammatical Institutes seized on everywhere by everyone as much
for the depth of meanings as for the elegance of its diction, particularly
because many people accept new things more, throw out old things for
the sake of new things coming in, soak themselves in new things and
preach novelty. His biographer (perhaps Goswin himself, writing in the
third person) recalls that Goswin wearied of copying out this text and
eventually lamented:
What use is it to gain eternity to know the rules of speaking correctly and
not to keep the rule of living correctly? Surely he who speaks skillfully and
lives without direction, should be considered not skilled, but lost? If Priscian
holds the key to secular wisdom, are we not lost? It shall not be asked by
the supreme judge whether we have read Priscian, but if we have kept to
Christian behavior.44
Goswin, who prided himself on having dared to resist Abelard in argu-

ment, subsequently became a monk at St.-Medard, in Soissons, and then
abbot at Anchin. Enthusiasm in the schools for speculative grammar cre-
ated a reaction among those who thought that too narrow a focus on the
study of discourse could lead to a lack of attention to the ethical question
of how one should live. These arguments, the result of increasing spe-
cialization in the schools, would continue to play themselves out through-
out Abelards later career.
Abelards earliest glosses on dialectic make no allusion to debate about
universals, one particular type of vox. These glosses, probably delivered
some time before 1109, perhaps even when he was teaching at Melun or
Corbeil, explain that the core texts of dialectic deal with words (voces),
but do not provide any extended digressions or any sustained criticism of
ideas of Boethius, whose name is rarely mentioned, except for an occa-
sional discussion that explains that there was no profound discrepancy
between Boethius and Aristotle, if one appreciated the different way in
which they understood certain words.45
the early years 33
While most glosses on Porphyry and Aristotle from the period are
anonymous, those of Abelard are among the rst to explicitly identify
their author, as in Paris, BnF lat. 13368: The Presentation [Editio] on
Porphyry of Peter Abelard, the younger supreme peripatetic of Le Pallet.
John of Salisbury recalls that Abelard had always followed the principle
that in expounding a text, the aim should be to promote ease of under-
standing, not to create difculties. In the case of Porphyrys Isagoge, this
meant interpreting predicables simply as classes of words.46 As with all
glosses of Abelard, this Editio begins with a prologue, laying out four key
ideas: the intention of the author being discussed, the substance (materia)
under discussion, his purpose or nal end, and the part of dialectic to
which it is directed.47 The opening lines betray from the outset a distinc-
tive emphasis in interpretation in their claim that his intention is to deal
with six types of predicable: genus, species, differentia, the particular, the
accident, and the individual, and what they signify.48 To be concerned
with Porphyrys intention (intentio) was not in itself unusual. Boethius
had used the term himself to explain what Porphyry wanted to teach.
Whereas it was normal to explain that Porphyry considered ve types of
predicable in his introduction to Aristotles Categories, Abelards claim
that Porphyry intended to deal with six but considered the individual
within each of the ve other categories marked a radical departure from
tradition.49 There is no hint of this idea in Gerlands Dialectica. Abelard
denes the meaning of words not as things but as signicata. When Por-
phyry uses the phrase consideration of these things, Abelard explains
that this means the six words. While there is no extended discussion of
universals in this gloss, he is clear that he considers both genus and species
to be voces. He briey dismisses an opinion that a genus signies a col-
lection of individuals, an idea mentioned in passing by William of Cham-
peaux.50 He understands the category of most special as still a potentially
innite category, distinct from the individuals it might embrace. Abelard
does not occupy himself with ontological questions in these literal glosses,
as his prime concern is to explain the different classes of predicable as
different types of vox.
Abelards major theme is that all predicables are physical utterances of
human imposition. Genus and species cannot be reduced to one very
general being, as being (ens), is simply an ambiguous name, not a xed
category.51 A differentia is not a thing, but a word imposed to signify vary-
ing degrees of difference, whether making a species different from a genus
or one individual of one species from another.52 When dealing with some-
thing that is whole (like a mortal, rational animal), these categories are
words considered together, giving the reason why something is considered
as a whole. Similarly, in a bronze statue the bronze and the shape provide
the reason for it being a whole. A proprium is a word imposed to signify
what is particular to one thing rather than another.53
In his early gloss on the Categories, the young Abelard explains the
reason why Aristotle identies genus and species as secondary substances.
They are not substances in themselves, but signify aspects of a primary
substance, which signify something individual. Man and animal determine
the quality of a substance, but do not signify a substance in themselves.54
Occasionally in these early glosses Abelard invokes traditional vocabulary
when distinguishing between a word (vox) and the thing signied (res
signicata), but he never does so with any particular ontological concern.55
His major concern is simply to identify as vocal utterances, able to be
used in different ways, the types of words we use.
Abelards early gloss on Aristotles Periermeneias is much fuller than
that on the Categories, and survives in two recensions, perhaps resulting
from separate sets of lectures.56 Whereas early vocalist debate seems to
have concentrated on interpreting genera and species as voces, an issue
raised by Porphyrys introduction to the Categories, Abelard explores the
Periermeneias for what it has to say about the conceptions or understand-
ings (intellectus) that words and propositions generate. William of Cham-
peaux himself had composed glosses on the Periermeneias.57 Abelard is
particularly concerned with the ambiguity of any statement when it moves
away from relating to an individual. The task of the Periermeneias is to
instruct students in how to establish categorical statements appropriate
for a logical argument. Abelard was fascinated by the way different utter-
ances might serve to generate the same mental idea.58 Aristotles text
enabled him to reect that both a noun and a verb and thus a phrase
(oratio) as a whole had no natural signifying capacity except as it pleases
(secundum placitum) in relation to a specic subject.59 He resists the idea
that a proposition such as Every man is an animal has a single meaning,
considering it to have one sense about Plato and another about Cicero
or Socrates. He then elucidates the different types of modal proposition
and what makes them true or false. Just because we might say that Soc-
rates is a harp-player and he is good in his behavior does not mean that
we can conclude he is a good harp-player . . . When we say Homer is
something, namely, that he is a poet, we mean that he lives through his
poetry, not that we predicate is of Homer in a sense of simply existing.60
Predication according to accident can be made of a thing, such as Homer,
or it can refer to a thing that did not exist at all, such as A chimaera is
thinkable.61
Another version survives of these literal glosses on Porphyry, Aristotle,
the early years 35
and Boethius, perhaps recording a separate delivery of the same lectures,

in which Abelard gives some very explicit examples to illustrate different
types of contradiction that relate to sexual and scatological behavior.
There is one passage in the gloss on the Periermeneias in which Abelard
comments of Aristotle:
Here he agrees that such a division is made, whether some that are open
equally to afrmation and negation, such as she will have sex, she will not
have sex, [or some] that relate rather to another, like she will rub, she
will not rub; this relates more to another, that is to rubbing, because she
is from Chartres. Similarly in chance expressions, it can apply equally to
both, as Peter will close the door, Peter will not close the door; or it
relates more to another, as Peter will fall in the latrine, Peter will not fall
in the latrine relates more to another, that is, falling, because he is small,
even if great in forbearance.62
Whereas Aristotle had conned himself to generalities with examples like

Every man is white, every man is not white, Abelard livens up his
lecture by giving the example of a loose woman from Chartres. He even
turns Aristotles contrast between small and large into a humorous
comment about his being slight in stature.63
Abelards comments in these literal glosses explicate obscure phrases,
often in a revealing way. For example, he rewrites a sentence of Boethius,
The division of the whole is made into parts, but the division of an
utterance is not made into parts but is made into those things which that
utterance signies, so as to avoid using thing (res): that is, is distrib-
uted to each item signied so that what are signied are not the things
divided but the names of what is signied.64 When Boethius says, So it
happens that a genus is a kind of matter, Abelard adds that is vocal,
not real to clarify that this genus is a word rather than a thing. The
distinction between realis and vocalis, not found in Boethius or indeed in
any patristic tradition, is a key feature of the Glosule on Priscian, when
it seeks to distinguish between man as a word and man as a specic
thing.65 Abelard does not make a major issue out of these comments but
rather presents the words of Boethius in a way that is accessible to his
students.66
Other Early Writings on Dialectic
Besides these relatively brief glosses on the standard texts of the curric-
ulum, Abelard produced an introductory treatise on the subject, no longer
extant, that he called Introductiones parvulorum, which may have been

modeled on the Introductiones of William of Champeaux. He tells us that
it dealt with propositions that are opposite to each other, as well as with
various forms of categorical and hypothetical syllogism.67 One manuscript
(Orleans, Bm 266) that reports many opinions of Joscelin of Vierzy and
William of Champeaux, as well as those of Abelard from the period 1109
1113, contains a discussion, entitled Secundum magistrum Petrum sententie,
of paralogism, or faulty reasoning, such as This man is this body, but this
body is prior to this man as the matter of this man; therefore this man is
prior to this man. His point is that the way in which the terms are used
in the assumption and in the conclusion are different: In everything we
should consider the sense more than words, since many arguments deceive
us according to words, through similarity with other words, and the same
rules seem to be applied to false as to true arguments.68 Abelard also
resolves various sophisms by examining the vox involved in more detail.
For example, when a group of four (senarius) is said to be made out of a
group of four and its half, its can refer either personally to the individ-
uals or indifferently (indifferenter) and simply according to a common na-
ture, given because of some similarity between identical individuals. The
word man is given to individual men, or collectively to men because of
their similarity to each other. Abelard examines a traditional liturgical
phrase contrasting Eve and Mary (mulier quae damnavit, salvavit: woman
who has damned [us], has saved) to make the point that in this case
woman did not refer to the same person, but indifferently to the nature
of the female sex. If we say that Socrates is a man means Socrates is
that which he is, that (id) is used both indifferenter according to both
human nature and to the person.69 This is a theme that Abelard would
develop further in his later glosses on the Periermeneias.70 He wishes to
distinguish the individual identity of Socrates or Eve or Mary from his or
her identity as a man or a woman.
Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux
A number of William of Champeauxs students became in turn teachers

of dialectic and divinity and then bishops, committed to promoting ec-
clesiastical reform. Joscelin was a particularly signicant successor to Wil-
liam, as he seems to have taught at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame
during the period 11101112 and to have developed Williams non-
difference theory of identity in relation to universals. In time he became
bishop of Soissons (11261152), a friend of Suger of St.-Denis, and senior
the early years 37
adviser to the king of France.71 Ulger, bishop of Angers (11251148), was

another such teacher-bishop, whose arguments about form and substance
recall the strict grammatical assumptions of William of Champeaux, but
applied to theology. By criticizing William and his admirers, Abelard ran
the risk of being excluded from a signicant and powerful network in the
Church.
In June/July 1113, William of Champeaux was appointed bishop of
Chalons-sur-Marne, in the archdiocese of Reims. Instead of studying di-
vinity with William as he had intended, Abelard went to Laon to listen
to Master Anselm (d. 1117), as noted earlier, widely respected as a great
authority on Scripture and the Fathers of the Church. Anselm had ini-
tiated a project to provide accessible glosses on the text of all the most
important books of the Bible that would be continued by many of his
loyal disciples, in the same way as secular authors were studied. Anselm
of Laon and his disciples attached great importance to explicating all the
voces of Scripture, each of which were revered as revealing some aspect
of the divine message. Anselm was also famous for delivering sententie, or
teachings, about a range of questions about Christian doctrine, sacra-
ments, and ethics, all of great relevance to the reform of Christian society.
Many distinguished teachers passed through Anselms school. Gilbert of
Poitiers, for example, delivered his glosses on the Psalms in Anselms
presence before applying speculative grammar to theological questions.72
Unlike Abelard, Gilbert appreciated the value of respecting his teachers.
Anselm of Laon was one of the rst inuential non-monastic teachers
of divinity to emerge in France in the early twelfth century. He drew
heavily on the teaching of Augustine, in particular as summarized by
canonists like Ivo of Chartres. Ivos Decretum was a source for the widely
circulated Sententie Magistri A., made up almost entirely of patristic texts
about the Trinity, the angels, the creation of man, original sin, marriage,
penance, and the virtues.73 Many of these texts are commented upon in
a widely diffused sentence collection, sometimes identied as Sententie
Anselmi.74 It begins by announcing that God is the principle and cause
of everything made through divine wisdom, but it contains little analysis
of God as a trinity of persons. These sentences are more concerned with
original sin, redemption, the sacraments, sin, and virtue than with more
abstract theoretical questions. While they refer to an opinion that an act,
such as sexual intercourse, is in itself morally neutral and that only in-
tention determines whether it is right or wrong, such ideas were already
circulating in Anselms lifetime.75 These sentences report Anselm as vig-
orously afrming the doctrine that original sin is inherited from Adam by
every generation and is manifest in the phenomenon of sexual desire. At
the same time, they speak lyrically of caritas as the true foundation of any
good action and develop at great length the Augustinian idea that mar-
riage is not sinful if it is pursued for the sake of having children.76 While
we cannot be sure how much these sentences have been shaped or com-
posed by one of Anselms disciples, there seems no reason to doubt that
they transmit Anselms teaching.
Very similar arguments are also attributed to Anselm of Laon in the
Liber pancrisis, a compilation of texts by both the Fathers and the modern
masters, William of Champeaux, Ivo of Chartres, Anselm of Laon and
his brother, Ralph.77 While Anselm emerges in these sentences as a
teacher with much to say about ethical behavior in society at large, it is
also clear that he is convinced that Adams sin effectively subjected hu-
manity to the legitimate power of the devil until the coming of Christ,
conceived without the stain of sin, and that only through the sacraments
of the Church could humanity escape this yoke.78 Sentences attributed to
William of Champeaux present him as more interested than Anselm of
Laon in theoretical questions about the way words are used about God,
free will, providence, and predestination.79 William imitates Boethius in
explaining that the difference between the persons of the Trinity is not
the same as that between two individuals, who are the same non-
differently rather than through shared essence (the position that Abelard
forced him to concede).80 In his discussion, William draws on the de-
nition offered by the Glosule on Priscian that a noun names a specic
substance but signies quality. Yet after attempting to employ dialectic in
this way, he then falls back on the traditional Augustinian claim that
there is a gulf between things in this world and divinity: What we call
these three persons or how they differ among themselves is not yet clear
to us. . . . When it pleases God, he will reveal it to his faithful, because
this is eternal life.81 While interested in philosophical theology, William
inherits from Anselm of Laon an Augustinian awareness of the limitations
of reason.82 Having started a process of theological reection that recog-
nizes how names are applied by human imposition, he steers away from
talking about creation and concludes by insisting that discussion on mat-
ters of faith cannot be taken further.
The inuence of William of Champeaux may also be evident in the
Sententie divine pagine, which is more theoretically informed than the Sen-
tentie Anselmi but without its extensive discussion about practical pastoral
matters.83 While it has been described as a product of the school of An-
selm of Laon, the Sententie divine pagine betray a distinct philosophical
concern with how words are assigned improprie about God, the supreme
good. It acknowledges that the Divine Trinity can be known through the
the early years 39
authority of Scripture as well as through reason in that the Father is him

from whom all things come, the Son is the wisdom through which they
were made, and the Holy Spirit is the goodness of God the Father.84 Like
the sentences attributed to William of Champeaux in the Liber pancrisis,
the Sententie divine pagine tentatively opens up theological enquiry to rea-
son but then warns of the necessary limits to any such endeavor: [S]ince
we cannot supply reasoning, only belief, let us not go into disputation.85
Underpinning Williams theology is an assumption that any noun refers
to every objective reality that it names, as in the case of spiritus, which
names every incorporeal substance, whether a human soul or any of the
divine persons.86
While William does acknowledge the role of reason in understanding
divine nature, he holds that this knowledge has been seriously deformed
through original sin and that only through grace can we rise to higher
knowledge.87 He refers to the institutions of the Old Testament, but not
the teaching of the philosophers, as enabling humanity to come to faith.88
William is even more rigorous than Anselm in his assessment of original
sin as sexual in character, manifest in the illicit movement of a sexual
organ no longer subordinate to reason.89 Concupiscence, or lust, is both
the stimulus and the consequence of sin, and is the reason why Christ,
born of a virgin, came to redeem mankind. There is a sensual as well as
a rational side to human nature; the soul perceives specic things through
the senses, but reason considers individual things universally, according
to what is a universal man or a universal substance.90 The corruption of
reason through sin means that our knowledge of universal truths is dam-
aged and that only through the grace of a sinless Christ, free of the stain
of lust, are we able to be redeemed from the devils hold over humanity.91
The benignity of God is his promise to free us from the chain of lust, by
which we still struggle to reach our heavenly reward, even after the grace
of baptism.92 In Christ, however, there is perfect charity, and it is through
loving God that humanity is restored to its true identity. Williams un-
derstanding of ethics is heavily theological in character.
When Abelard was forced to turn to Anselm of Laon to pursue his
studies in divinity, he was disappointed in what Anselm had to offer.
Abelard does not reveal in the Historia calamitatum that only the previous
year the bishop of Laon had been murdered in a civic disturbance that
followed the suppression of the commune by Louis VI. In an unstable
political environment, Abelards public criticism of Anselm of Laon was
perceived as undermining ecclesiastical authority. Abelard was scathing
about the general reverence accorded someone whose words he judged to
be devoid of depth and reasoning: I was surprised that for those who are
educated, the writings and glosses of the Fathers were not sufcient for
understanding their commentaries without further guidance.93 Abelard
then started work on a commentary on Ezekiel, until he was forbidden
from teaching by Anselm of Laon at the instigation of two other disciples,
Alberic of Reims and Lotulf of Lombardy.
Abelard reports that he did not stay long at Laon. He returned to
Paris, perhaps late in 1113, when he was offered the position he had long
coveted of teacher at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame. Abelard was
now at the height of his career, at the age of only thirty-four. While never
a canon of Notre-Dame, he had acquired by this time a non-residential
canonry at the Cathedral of Sens.94 This was a prestigious position, of-
fering good clerical connections. His friend Stephen of Garlande was not
only royal chancellor and dean of Ste.-Genevie`ve but also provost of the
Cathedral of Sens, the center of a vast archdiocese, encompassing Paris,
Chartres, Troyes, Auxerre, Orleans, Meaux, and Nevers. At the cathedral
school of Notre-Dame, Abelard was able to complete the commentary on
Ezekiel that he had begun at Laon and thus to acquire a reputation in
lecturing on Scripture as much as on philosophical texts. During this
period he was also able to work on his rst major literary composition,
the Dialectica. This treatise would establish Abelard as a thinker who went
much further than either Roscelin of Compie`gne or William of Cham-
peaux by presenting a synthesis of teaching on dialectic such as had not
been seen since the time of Boethius.
The years of Williams episcopate, from 1113 to his death in January
1122, were important not just for witnessing the rise to fame of Peter
Abelard in Paris and his spectacular fall from grace following his affair
with Heloise. They witnessed other developments of great signicance.
One of Williams rst actions in 1113, even before being consecrated
bishop, was to secure royal conrmation for the newly established Abbey
of St.-Victor. Its rst abbot, Gilduin, oversaw the construction of new
buildings, made possible by this royal recognition, and a regeneration of
a strict religious life not possible within the cathedral cloister of Notre-
Dame, where individual canons lived in a degree of comfort and prosperity
very different from the way of life pursued by the regular canons of St.-
Victor. William of Champeaux formed a close relationship with Conon,
who was cardinal bishop of Palestrina and who had been the papal legate
of Paschal II in both Gaul and Germany since 1111.95 Conon convened
a series of councils at Beauvais, Reims, Chalons-sur-Marne, and Soissons
between 1115 and 1121, asserting a policy of ecclesiastical independence
from the secular arm.
the early years 41
In 1115, just as Abelard was reaching the pinnacle of his reputation

at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame, two other individuals, one a
highly articulate Cistercian monk, the other a more self-effacing Augus-
tinian canon, started to develop their careers under the shadow of William
of Champeaux. In their different ways, both would eventually eclipse Ab-
elard in terms of prominence and respectability within the Latin Church.
One was Hugh of St.-Victor, a cleric from Hammersleben in Saxony, who
came to Paris with his uncle around 1115, just as the new Abbey of St.-
Victor was being established. While we do not know the year of his birth,
it seems likely that he had already received a good education in Germany
prior to his coming to Paris. Hugh was steeped in the writings of the
Church Fathers, but was less familiar with Aristotelian ways of thinking
about the nature of languagesuch as those that interested and inu-
enced both William of Champeaux and Abelard. In his Didascalicon, writ-
ten in the mid-1120s, Hugh encouraged his students to acquire a general
knowledge of the liberal arts but warned against getting excessively in-
volved in speculative discussions if they created a distraction from study-
ing Scripture and pursuing a contemplative life. Whereas William of
Champeaux had been interested in the theory of argument, Hugh was
preoccupied with developing his ideas about how the created world could
itself lead the soul to God. Beneting from the stability provided by the
foundation of St.-Victor, Hugh would emerge as a leading voice in den-
ing Christian orthodoxy during the 1120s and 1130s.
The other protege of William of Champeaux who began to emerge at
this time was Bernard, elected abbot of a new monastery at Clairvaux in
1115 at the age of twenty-ve, after having joined the Abbey of Cteaux
with a group of thirty friends only three years earlier. Breaking conven-
tion, Bernard approached William for ordination, ostensibly (as William
of St.-Thierry tells us) because the bishopric of Langres was vacant at the
time. (In fact, we know that Bishop Joceran of Langres had already been
appointed in 1115.)96 Under Stephen Harding, Cteaux had established a
pattern of monastic observance based on strict adherence to the Rule of
Benedict, without any of the additional observances and liturgical prac-
tices that had grown up over the intervening centuries. Just as Abelard
and his students wanted to go back to the spirit of Aristotle, so monks
following the ordo, or way of life, of Cteaux wanted to return to the spirit
of Benedict. William of Champeaux supported Bernard in his project and
encouraged him to establish a daughter foundation within the diocese of
Chalons-sur-Marne at Trois-Fontaines in 1118. The following year, Cal-
lixtus II approved a document, the Carta caritatis, that set out the ideals
of love by which these monks were bound. William and Conon of Pale-
strina played a major role in thrusting the Cistercian movement onto the
public stage. As a young abbot, Bernard was so committed to personal
austerity that William of Champeaux became very concerned for his
health and persuaded the Cistercian general chapter to allow Bernard to
live apart from the community at Clairvaux. Although William had fa-
cilitated the founding of an abbey of canons regular at St.-Victor, he died
and was buried at Clairvaux on January 18, 1122, after taking a Cistercian
habit only eight days prior to his death.97
During the last years of his life, William of Champeaux became in-
creasingly sympathetic to the ethical and religious ideals being pursued
by Bernard of Clairvaux. William was an inuential gure, eager to sup-
port the efforts of Bernard to diffuse ideals of caritas into religious life and
to reform political structures within the Church. Abelard was disap-
pointed by Williams hostility. He accused William, as he would later
accuse Bernard, of paying lip service to religious ideals while pursuing a
prominent position in public life. Abelards rhetoric should not conceal
the fact that Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux were signicant
gures who educated and inuenced a remarkable generation of educated
clerics, many of whom went on to become inuential bishops and abbots.
Abelard owed more to his teachers than he cared to admit. He was not
wrong, however, in observing that his early conicts with disciples of
Anselm of Laon and of William of Champeaux lay at the source of many
of his subsequent difculties.
3
Challenging Tradition
The Dialectica
T he Dialectica, dedicated to the education of the sons of his brother

Dagobert, was Peter Abelards rst large-scale composition. Its ve
constituent treatises, each dealing with one aspect or another of language
and argument, must have taken many years to write.1 We cannot be sure
whether certain passagessuch as his response to accusations that a
Christian should not deal with matters pertaining to faith, which appears
within a prologue to the fourth treatisewere added at a later date, after
he became a monk at St.-Denis in 1117/18. The frequent criticisms that
he makes of William of Champeaux in the rst two treatises, coupled
with examples such as Petrum diligit sua puella (His girl loves Peter) as
the converse of Petrus diligit suam puellam (Peter loves his girl) offered
in the third treatise, suggest that a date between 1112 and 1117/18 is
more likely for a composition that established Abelard as the most im-
portant dialectician of his day.2
In structure, Abelards Dialectica is closer to the Dialectica of Gerland
of Besancon than to the Introductiones dialecticae of William of Cham-
peaux, and may have been modeled on the lost Dialectica of Roscelin.
The rst treatise, The Book of Parts (unfortunately missing its opening
in the single surviving manuscript), deals with antepraedicamenta, or the
predicables discussed by Porphyry; the categories of Aristotle; and post-
predicamenta, or other signifying words. The second treatise deals with
categorical statements and syllogisms; the third with the topics, or the
different types of argument; the fourth with hypothetical statements and
43
syllogisms, and the fth with division and denition. Abelard applies the
titles Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics to the second and fourth
treatises, conveying the impression that this is a synthesis of Aristotelian
dialectic, even though Abelard knows only a few phrases of Aristotles
Prior Analytics and nothing at all of the Posterior Analytics. Abelards em-
phasis throughout is that individual words have to be studied not for their
literal meaning but for the intention behind their use. Unlike Gerland,
Abelard frequently contrasts his argument with views with which he dis-
agrees, in particular those of William of Champeaux. After the rst and
second treatises, Abelard tends to refer more to the opinions of certain
people, but he targets the same set of opinions. Only once in the fth
treatise does he refer to an insane teaching of master Ros.3
Frequently Abelard criticizes those who adopt a strictly grammatical
view that words possess an inherent capacity to signify. This comes up,
for example, when talking about the capacity of a unit of air (namely, a
word) to be heard and to signify. Familiar with the argument of the Glosule
on Priscian that a vox such as man is not a single substance everywhere
but is similar to another utterance of the same word, he holds that it is
properly the sound that is heard and signies; the air has to be struck in
a certain way to carry meaning, in the same way as it is the form of
substances rather than the substances themselves that we perceive.4 While
Abelard distances himself from the more strictly grammatical aspect of its
teaching, he is indebted to the Glosule for its reection on the physical
process of signication. He is interested in logic as a discipline about
words rather than things: Those who seek to serve logic should deal more
with things for the sake of names than with names for the sake of things.5
Whereas Gerland of Besancon simply presents dialectic from a vocalist
perspective, Abelard introduces a more adversarial perspective into his
analysis. Thus in discussing the term yesterday under the category of
when, he emphasizes that there is no real thing that corresponds to
yesterday, as it is a relative term whose meaning depends on when it is
used. He argues this against those who consider more the nature of things
in species than the imposition of words.6 Sometimes this means engaging
in criticism of Boethius for referring to the nature of genera and species.
Abelard politely suggests that in such places he may have followed the
opinion of others rather than his own view for the sake of providing
basic instruction.7
Abelard uses his discussion of the category of relatives (that by which
something exists) to support the view of Aristotle that all forms are rel-
atives in this sense and not necessarily actual things, against the inter-
challenging tradition 45
pretation he attributes to Plato that a relative exists as something. With-

out any detailed knowledge of Platos teaching, other than what he had
learned from Boethius and the Timaeus, he argues that Aristotle rightly
criticized Plato for an excessively broad notion of a relative. In the Cat-
egories, Aristotle had discussed the case of what was knowable by knowl-
edge (scientia scibile) to show that something knowable could exist before
that knowledge.8 Abelard goes further than Aristotle in observing that a
category such as knowable can also be related to another concept, know-
ability or the power to know: Just as something knowable is said to be
knowable by knowledge, one can just as well say knowable by know-
ability (scibile scibilitate) and indeed more correctly since this is the proper
form of knowable, so that for Plato the same thing can have two relatives
and perhaps more. For just as knowledge can refer to something knowable
or able to be known, why can it not also refer to being able to know?9
While Boethius had frequently used the term scibilis in his translation of
Aristotles Categories, he never used the abstraction scibilitas. He had,
however, invented the term Platonitas to evoke the quality of being
Plato.10 Abelard invents scibilitas in the Dialectica (repeating the concept
in his Logica Ingredientibus) to show how Aristotles criticism of Platonic
forms could be taken one step further.11
Abelard is fascinated by Aristotles critique of Plato because he sees it
as mirroring his own situation in relation to William of Champeaux:
When Aristotle saw that so many difculties followed from the denition
of relatives that Plato had given too loosely, he dared to correct the
teaching of his master, and knew he had become the teacher of the one
of whom he had been a disciple.12 Abelard acknowledges that if he ac-
tually knew the writings of Plato, he might not necessarily accept these
arguments of Aristotle, who could have been driven through envy or
greed for reputation, or from a display of learning, but argues that he
cannot really defend Plato without access to his writings.13 When Abelard
describes his confrontation with William in the Historia calamitatum, he
presents himself as like Aristotle correcting the opinions of Plato. In the
Dialectica, Abelard transforms a comment of Boethius, that Aristotle was
here correcting the teaching of Plato, into the story of an epic confron-
tation between teacher and disciple: When Aristotle saw that so many
difculties followed from the denition of relatives that Plato had given
too loosely, he dared to correct the teaching of his master, and knew he
had become the teacher of the one of whom he had been a disciple.14
While acknowledging that for Plato there might be a multiplicity of forms
by which something exists, he argues that an abstraction such as scibilitas
has no existence beyond that of which it is the form. One must always
consider sense rather than words themselves.15 Abstract forms do not exist
independently from a world of individual things.
Much of his argument is a critique of William of Champeauxs view
that an individual word signies in its own right. Abelard presents the
argument as between those who consider that a vox signies everything
on which it is imposed, and those who hold that it signies only those
things which are denoted and preserved in its message [in sententia ipsius].
While Abelard attributes to his teacher an opinion, based on Priscians
denition of a noun as that which signies substance with quality, he
considers the alternative view, which he attributes to Garmundus (a little-
known teacher active in Tournai at the turn of the twelfth century), as
distinctly more rational.16 Abelards failure to mention Roscelin here is
revealing. He questions Williams interpretation of the denition in the
Glosule on Priscian, that a noun names a substance but signies a quality.
Even if he is inaccurate in presenting the views of William of Champeaux,
who himself may have drawn on the Glosule in his teaching, Abelard is
saying that William does not properly understand its message. Scrutinizing
passages in Aristotle and Boethius that could be construed as saying a
noun signies a substance, Abelard argues that the proper meaning of any
utterance is that held in the message of an utterance [in sententia vocis]),
a notion that goes beyond anything in the Glosule on Priscian. Abelard
criticizes authority for too often applying the word signication too
broadly to every kind of imposition.17 He gives the example of his own
cognomen, Abaelardus, as a noun used to specify a particular thing,
namely, his own substance.18 He rejects the argument of William of
Champeaux that a white man walking does not have a single meaning,
as in reality this is a single phrase, just as Aristotle had observed that a
good harp player is a single noun.
The Glosule had tried to clarify Priscians denition that a noun (no-
men) signies substance with quality by distinguishing between its naming
of a specic substance and its signifying a specic quality. Yet Aristotles
distinction in the Categories between rst and second substances did not
resolve a broader question, namely, whether substantia means a specic
substance, or substance in general. Abelards discourse is shaped by his
desire to read these Aristotelian categories as the product of human im-
position, endeavoring to make sense of a world of individual things. The
ideas that Abelard puts forward in the Dialectica were not totally new. He
agrees with those grammarians who serve logic, namely, those who fol-
lowed the teaching of the Glosule on Priscian about the distinction be-
tween nomination and signication. Abelard would subsequently nd
other ways of dening the meaning of words in his later writings on logic,
but he here formulates a basic idea that would have wide implications for
interpreting the meaning of propositions and arguments, as well as the
language of religious tradition.
This understanding of the sententia vocis, the teaching or message of a
word, had important implications for understanding the verb. Following
Priscians denition that every verb signies an action or a passion, Ab-
elard notes that some grammarians taught that a verb such as I love
(amo) signies an action, while love (amor) is a passion that inheres in
the subjectas if love and the subject are two separate things.19 He rejects
the traditional denition on the grounds that it does not distinguish suf-
ciently between the character of a verb and a noun. In particular, he
argues that the role of the substantive verb within Peter is white or
Homer is a poet does not signify any essence independent of the subject;
it simply links two terms. He judges such a phrase by its sense rather than
by the literal meaning of each word.20 The idea that the substantive verb
is part of the predicate and that is can function simply as a copula is
one that had been raised by Gerland and may go back to the teaching of
Roscelin, if not to the Glosule on Priscian.21 Abelard is much more out-
spoken in making this an area of disagreement with his teacher, whom
he reports claimed that the statement Homer is a poet (an example
brought up by Aristotle in the Periermeneias) is an improper or gurative
expression because Homer does not exist in the present.22 Abelard also
goes further than Gerland in discussing statements such as A chimaera
is thinkable, which he considers a perfectly legitimate statement, even
though the verb does not imply that a chimaera actually exists.23 He is
familiar with Williams glosses on the Periermeneias, but rejects what his
teacher had to say as a calumny about the joining of words.24 Abelard
wants to formulate a theory of language that respects conventions of lin-
guistic usage, more in tune with what he thinks Aristotle wanted to say.
Abelard begins the second treatise of the Dialectica, which deals with
categorical statements and arguments, with a prologue in which he refuses
to give in to the detraction of rivals and the oblique criticisms of the
jealous. Although jealousy puts obstacles to our writings, and does not
allow the exercise of study he will not allow this to stand in his way.
Imitating Gerland in his Dialectica, Abelard explains that both Aristotle
and Boethius exceeded the bounds of moderation, the former in being
too brief and obscure, the latter in being too prolix. His intention is to
create a synthesis of the subject that encompasses the teaching of Aris-
totle, Porphyry, and Boethius: Let the text of our Dialectica contain the
synthesis of them all and expose it to the awareness and familiarity of
readers, if the Creator gives us some time for our life and jealousy loosens
the restrictions on our writing.25
Some of the distinctions he makes, such as about the perfection of
sense in complete phrases (i.e., man runs) as distinct from the incom-
pleteness of sense in phrases such as man running, follow standard clas-
sications espoused by William of Champeaux that Abelard would later
abandon.26 He echoes examples that William had given of the difference
between imperative and beseeching commands, such as Accept the man-
uscript and May God be present, but then adds the example of a de-
siderative statement, Let the lady friend kiss me or Let the lady friend
hurry.27 This prefaces his main discussion about dialectical argument as
reasoning through which truth is distinguished from falsehood. Following
Aristotle in the Periermeneias, Abelard develops the idea that propositions
both deal with things and generate understandings (intellectus) about those
things.28 Abelard uses the word things (res) in this part of the Dialectica
in a way that he would later disavow. At the time of his writing the
Dialectica, Abelard had not completely thrown off some of the basic ter-
minology that he inherited from Boethius, namely, that words signify both
things (res) and understandings.29 Elsewhere in the Dialectica, Abelard
echoes a phrase of William of Champeaux when he comments that the
quantity of a universal thing consists in its diffusion through lower
things.30 He had not yet rejected all reference to universal things, as
in the Logica Ingredientibusonly the idea that a universal as a predicate
cannot be a thing.31
Abelard is insistent in the Dialectica that what are spoken of by prop-
ositions are not things in themselves but are rather about things. All
depends on the sententia, or message, of the proposition.32 In If there is
a man, there is an animal, the truth of the consequence has to be nec-
essary from the beginning of time, even if all things ceased to exist (a
theme he takes up in relation to hypothetical consequences later in the
treatise). Propositions express the way in which things exist rather than
things themselves.33 Abelards concern is not so much to do away with
language about things as to explain how categorical statements and ar-
guments function. He examines phrases such as Homer is a poet that
William used to think were improper and gurative expressions. Abelard
insists they are legitimate, because they describe Homer rather than speak
about any existing thing.34 In formulating such ideas he is going signi-
cantly beyond classical Boethian theory of language.
Abelard follows the basic structure of teaching provided by the Perier-
meneias to summarize for his reader different types of proposition as well
as each type of negation of that proposition. The statement Every man
is white could be negated as Every man is not white, but this is different
from Not every man is white. While he is aware that opposites cannot
both be true, one has always to consider precisely what aspect of a prop-
osition is being negated.35 He criticizes Boethius for thinking that No
man is just and Not every man is just are the same in that they both
negate the universal statement Every man is just, and claims that Ar-
istotle had considered negation more subtly than Boethius.36 In dealing
with modal propositions (It is possible for Socrates to run), Abelard
explains that possibility does not necessarily relate to the mode of being
of Socrates but to the utterance itself, as in It is possible for Socrates to
be a bishop.37 Gerland of Besancon had raised a similar point in his
Dialectica when speaking about the meaning of possible. Possibility, un-
derstood as potency, is that which is not repugnant to someones nature,
even if it will never take place, as in the statement It is possible for
Gerland to become a bishop.38 When Abelard says that it is possible for
Socrates to be a bishop, he is making the point that the possibility relates
to Socrates insofar as he is a human being, not as a property of Socrates
in particular. He sees possibility as a mode that relates to an utterance
rather than to sense.39 This contrasts with the view he attributes to Wil-
liam of Champeaux that modal propositions descend from the sense of a
simple proposition, namely, that It is possible for Socrates to run de-
scends from Socrates runs. To claim that possibility relates to what is
said by the proposition as a whole, would, he argues, result in such ab-
surdities as It is possible for every man not to be a man. He insists that
modal propositions derive not from sense (de sensu), as his teacher
claimed, but from the specic thing about which a modal statement is
made (de re).40 He sets rules for establishing equipollent assertions.41 There
are connections here to the teaching of Gerland of Besancon, who sim-
ilarly questioned a simplistic analysis of a modal proposition without ac-
tually formulating the de sensu/de re distinction.42 This suggests that Ab-
elard may have been inuenced by Roscelin in suggesting that William
of Champeaux had not fully grasped the teaching of the Periermeneias.43
Abelard analyzes modal statements to examine the meaning of state-
ments about the future that may be true, even though they do not exist
in present reality, but he still employs a terminology of res that he later
abandons. A statement such as There will be a war is about a thing,
but the proposition is not itself a thing.44 This analysis leads him to reject
the argument that just because God can foresee all things, things that are
possible happen by necessity.45 The argument that if it is possible for
something to happen other than God foresees, God can be deceived does
not hold because what is expressed by the antecedent (for something to
happen other than as God foresees) is false. There is no comparable dis-

cussion in Gerlands Dialectica. Abelards concern is always with the par-
ticular sententia, or sense, of a universal proposition rather than with the
meaning of specic words. In a universal proposition such as Every dog
is an animal, there is a single sententia, even though one could argue
that canis also refers to a marine creature or to a star and thus signies
separate things.46 His analysis of different types of categorical syllogism or
logical argument continues this emphasis through his analysis of how con-
clusions are established in an argument.
The long third section of the Dialectica deals with the topics or uni-
versal principles underpinning different types of argument. For example,
in the consequence If X is a man, X is an animal, the inference that
there is an animal (i.e., the genus of man) reects the maximal prop-
osition that whatever is predicated by a species, is similarly predicated
by a genus. Following Boethius and William of Champeaux, Abelard
understands the maximal proposition to be the axiom guaranteeing the
truth of any specic argument, containing the senses of all the conse-
quences that ow from a common mode of proof.47 He differs from his
teacher, however, in avoiding all reference to an arguments medium, ex-
cept perhaps to refer to it as the common mode of proof. Whereas
William had sought to identify this medium as about the relationship be-
tween genus and species, on which any valid inference is based, Abelard
insists that the perfect inference is not dependent on the reality of any
genus or species. Rather, a valid inference is that in which the truth of
the consequence follows entirely from the antecedent.48
Abelard rejects the opinion of those (like William) who hold that
probable consequences are as true as necessary ones. He sees this as con-
tradicting the distinction between truth, which relates to the existence
of a thing, and probability, which is based on what has an analogy to the
truthin other words, on opinion. The only true consequence is that
based on necessity.49 Arguments from analogy are always based on prob-
ability and are thus often used by orators but cannot be classed as true in
a strict dialectical sense.50 To illustrate an argument that is probably but
not necessarily true, he suggests, Although I may know that it is not
necessary for there to be love for a girl who is often caught at night talking
in secret with a young man, yet I easily suspect and concede that there
is love through this conversation, since we never see such conversations
taking place except among lovers.51 The true dialectician will never con-
fuse what seems to be truth with truth itself. He rejects the argument of
those who hold that such an inference is in itself true. Gerland of Besan-
con had used a similar example about love and congress in his Dialectica
but did not develop the contrast between truth and probable inference
or challenge the opinion of his teacher. A categorical statement may deal
with things, but the truth of a necessary consequence that ows from that
statement does not depend on the particular existence of things. Rather,
its truth must be based on an axiom, such as Whatever is predicated by
a species is also predicated by its genus. This leads Abelard to argue that
in a necessary consequence, the antecedent cannot exist without its con-
sequence.52 It is to be particularly noted that in the declaration of con-
sequences the property of utterances and right imposition are to be more
attended to and more considered than the essence of things.53 Abelard
is not denying that things exist, but he argues that attention must be
given to the meaning of words and phrases if things are to be adequately
described.54
While Abelard only refers once in this section to our teacher, he
continues to take issue with certain people who say that errors in faulty
consequences arise not from the enunciation of terms but from the im-
propriety of the middle term in an argument.55 This was a direct allusion
to the teaching of William of Champeaux, remembered by John of Sal-
isbury for expounding the science of nding the middle term on which
any specic argument was based. When two terms of an argument are
different (such as man and not-man), there is no middle, and thus
one cannot say that man is not-man.56 Much of his treatise is taken up
with the topic or universal proposition on which specic arguments are
based. In Abelards strict theory of consequences (which John of Salisbury
found difcult to accept), only those consequences are acceptable that
are enclosed in the antecedent.57 This understanding of the syllogism fol-
lows from rejecting Williams idea that the truth of a consequence was
preserved by the truth of the mediating topic. The logical necessity of an
argument as a whole was more important than word order. He points out
that a Latin sentence need not begin with a nominative, as in Petrum
diligit sua puella (His girl loves Peter); to swap the terms in this state-
ment, one has to say Petrus diligit suam puellam (Peter loves his girl).58
Relative pronouns have their force in relation to sense, not to word order.
Abelard then describes various forms of necessary consequence, draw-
ing in part on Boethiuss De differentiis topicis, about divisions or distinc-
tions, as, for example, the different types of cause (material, formal, nal,
and efcient) or different types of movement (through substance, quan-
tity, quality, and place). He expresses surprise that some people do not
consider a mother to be an efcient cause as much as a father, explaining
that humanity (homo) is an efcient cause in relation to composition,
even if God is the efcient cause in relation to creation.59 His emphasis
is always on correct appreciation of the meaning of words used to denote

cause, movement, increase, or decrease. When something is increased, as
when one grows in size, this is not strictly the addition of one thing to
something else but rather change in relation to what was before. It is not
a part that is increased but the whole composite in relation to its parts.60
This third section concludes with a discussion of Ciceros denition of
argument as reasoning that makes faith in an uncertain thing, which
he interprets as being about an understanding generated by the words.
An argument is not the same as its argumentation, or the words by which
it is expressed. He rejects the opinion of those who, sticking too much
to the words of authority consider every necessary argument to be nec-
essary in itself. In the statement Socrates is a man, therefore he is an
animal the argument is necessary, but the enthymeme (incomplete ar-
gument) is not necessary in itself, as it is possible that Socrates does not
exist.61 Always to be considered is the intention behind words.62
In an introductory preface to the fourth treatise, Abelard defends him-
self against an accusation that it is not licit for a Christian to deal with
those things that do not attain to faith by arguing that all knowledge
must be good in itself.63 Whether he is referring to criticisms made after
he became a monk at St.-Denis (ca. 1117/18) or was referring to earlier
difculties is not certain.64 Abelards comment that the young Augustine
would not have experienced difculty in believing Ambroses preaching
about how one God could be three persons if the bishop of Milan had
been skilled in dialectic shows that he had at least started to think about
defending dialectic in relation to theological study. In any case, he men-
tions these accusations against his teaching in order to compose an elo-
quent eulogy of dialectic as a treasury of wisdom, that divine grace has
deemed to reveal only to a few:
But because the daily effort of this teaching tires readers by regularity of
reading and too much subtlety pointlessly occupies many peoples studies
and time, many people not unreasonably distrust it, and do not dare to
approach its narrow gates; a number in fact, confused by its subtlety, with-
draw from its entrance and spew it out like the taste of an unfamiliar
fragrance; while they are unable to discern the quality of the fragrance
through their taste, they turn praise for its subtlety into slander, and fend
off the true weakness of their ability with false slander about knowledge;
while regret enames them to jealousy, they are not ashamed to attack those
whom they see as following the skill of this art. In its excellence, this skill
alone holds the place of conferring not difculty but rather ability. For
whatever time you labor in its study, you waste effort pointlessly if the gift
of heavenly grace does not create the capacity for such a great secret in
your mind. Daily practice can serve other disciplines with whatever abilities
are required; this [dialectic], however, is to be attributed to divine grace;
unless it instructs the mind within, one who teaches pounds the air to no
purpose. The more brilliant the servant of this art, the more what is served
is precious.65
This panegyric highlights a distinctive feature of Abelards approach. Di-
alectic is not a ponderous exercise in verbal skill but a divine gift that
enables its student to see beyond the meaning of individual words to the
sense that lies behind them.
This fourth treatise, on the attributes of hypothetical argument and
syllogisms, is also much shorter than the long previous section on topics.
There is some redundancy in organization, as he had already established
many of his basic principles about hypothetical arguments, namely, that
valid arguments are those in which the consequent is contained in the
antecedent. Abelard is particularly interested in the negation of a hypo-
thetical argument (If there is a man, there is an animal) because it raises
the question of the underlying sense that is being negated. He refuses to
accept that negation could ever relate only to its constituent parts (If
there is not a man, there is not an animal), as it has to relate to the
sentence as a whole, and he criticizes those who are too grammatical in
their approach.66 He rejects Boethiuss identication of hypothetical state-
ments that establish a consequence as to do with time, and does not
hesitate to point out that Boethius is either incomplete or follows the
opinion of other people.67 While in the strictest sense an adverb modies
a verb, this is not always so, and can refer to the sense of a proposition
as a whole.68 In discussing the conversion of hypothetical propositions (If
there is a man, there is a animal; if there is not an animal, there is not
a man), he comments that some people are astonished that he presumes
to comment on a subject not covered by Boethius. Rejecting their criti-
cism, he observes that following the argument that one should not go
beyond authority, no progress could ever have been made in the past.69
In the fth treatise, on division or denition, Abelard again questions
what Boethius has to say on the subject: There was not such perfection
among the ancient writers that teaching is not in need for our research
and that learning cannot grow among us mortals or receive any in-
crease.70 He begins by considering various kinds of subdivision dealt with
by Boethius, such as the division of genus into species. When a differentia
is applied to a genus (as in rational animal), he rejects the argument
that the differentia signies not just a distinct form but even matter. He
claims that our teacher W. abused language to such an extent that when
the name of a differentia was used to identify a species, it was taken as the
substantive of the species. He identies the problem as caused by William

clinging too closely to the words of authority.71 Although Porphyry iden-
tied animate and inanimate as dividing differentiae of substance, Abelard
refuses to understand these categories as substantive in their own right.
If we had sufcient names, this process of subdivision would extend to
innity.72 This was the opinion that identied genus and species as things
rather than as voces.
A related problem occurs in analysis of a whole, a word that can refer
to understanding of quantity or to the diffusion of a common essence.
When dealing with a people, there is no real unity, but a multiplicity of
individuals.73 A question also arises when a part is removed from the
whole. Does a human being remain a human being when a part is re-
moved? Does a house remain a house when a stone is removed? The
existence of parts, like a heap of stones, does not in itself require the
existence of a whole. If a nail or even a hand or foot were removed from
Socrates, Socrates would still remain.74
Another example of division that he takes up is that of anima, or soul,
traditionally classied into three powers: growth (as in plants), feeling (as
in animals), and discerning (as in man). Yet these different powers are
not part of a single generic substance, identied by Plato as a general soul
or soul of the world (anima mundi). Abelard invokes the authority of
Aristotle to recall that sense is always a quality in a body, just as the
power of growth exists in plants. Soul or anima is a quality of all living
things, not a general substance. He then observes that there are some
who interpret the division of anima as a particular rather than a general
soul, which Plato had said in the Timaeus was xed in those bodies, apt
for life. He criticizes those, adhering too closely to allegory, who un-
derstand the mind that proceeds from the Supreme Good to be the Son
and the world soul to be the Holy Spirit, which since it contains all
things, bestows its gifts on the hearts of certain faithful through indwelling
grace, which is said to give life by generating virtues in them.75 Abelard
criticizes this Platonic faith as erroneous in that it holds that the world
soul has a worldly origin rather than being coeternal with God. This
teaching of Plato has to be interpreted as a gmentum, a ction, that
claims that human souls were established from the beginning of time and
xed in the stars as well as sent into human form so that individual men
could be created. The ction should not be read literally. These criticisms
are directed against Platonists who navely identify the world soul with
the Holy Spirit, an attitude that he subsequently nuances in the Theologia
Summi boni.76 In the Dialectica he is more resolutely Aristotelian in
maintaining that various forms of anima only have a reality insofar as they
exist within specic individuals. He could be referring to Platonists such

as the young William of Conches, who once identied the world soul
with the Holy Spirit although subsequently refused to commit himself to
this claim (perhaps under Abelards inuence).77 His criticism of Plato is
based on philosophical grounds rather than on general suspicion of pagan
authority.
Abelard effectively rewrites the De divisione of Boethius by going back
to his understanding of the teaching of Aristotle in both the Categories
and Periermeneias. He takes the example of the bronze statue, comprising
both matter and form, to explain that when we say that it is bronze, it is
not being predicated by any substance other than the matter that has
been shaped by a form. The statue is not in itself an essence, but rather
applies to anything that is the image of something. Abelard emphasizes
that words do not have multiple meanings in their own right, but only
in relation to that about which they create an understanding.78 He ex-
plains that a res universalis is not a specic thing in itself, as in: In the
distribution of a universal thing, it is not comprehension of its quantity
or of its wholeness that is shown, but only its diffusion through inferior
things of what they participate in [sola participationis diffusio].79 Even
when questioning individual ideas of William, Abelard still uses tradi-
tional vocabulary about universal things to promulgate his theme that
words are of human imposition: For the Creator entrusted us with the
imposition of words, but properly reserved the nature of things to arrange
for himself.80
While there are no further specic allusions in this nal treatise to the
opinions of our teacher, Abelard continues to question those who adopt
an excessively literal interpretation of words and to confuse etymology
with actual meaning, as when Britones are said to be quasi-brutes, insofar
as they seem to be brutish and irrational through foolishness.81 Abelard
is effectively extending the Glosules denition of a noun when he explains
that a denition reveals a quality of a subject but does not signify a
substance in itself. He returns to his earlier argument about the legitimacy
of gurative statements, such as The day is sun shining on the earth,
to criticize those who argue that this is an improper expression because a
day cannot be strictly identied with the sun. In this case, the sun is the
cause of the day rather than the day itself.82 He sees gurative expressions
as legitimate ways of describing the world. Poetic imagery has its own
logic.
Conclusion
Abelard was certainly not the rst teacher in the schools of northern
France to focus attention on the meaning of words. His synthesis of vo-
calist teaching, however, outclassed anything produced by his contem-
poraries. The Dialectica of Gerland of Besancon, for example, is a vocalist
treatise that focused much more on identifying the rules underpinning
argument than with the way in which words, propositions, and arguments
convey meaning. In the late eleventh century, texts such as the Glosule
on Priscians Grammatical Institutes had opened up new possibilities with
their more speculative reection on the meaning of nouns, verbs, and
other parts of speech. Inevitably a challenge was presented to traditional
dialectic, as mediated by the translations and commentaries of Boethius,
by this new attention to words. Anselm of Bec gave some attention to
these questions in his De grammatico but never sought to create any syn-
thesis of dialectic as a whole. When he encountered the application of
vocalist principles to the denition of the Trinity, through the arguments
of Roscelin of Compie`gne, Anselm roundly condemned these dialecti-
cians of the modern time for being so absorbed by the notion that a
universal was a puff of air that they lacked all spiritual understanding.
While we do not know for certain how extensive was Roscelins achieve-
ment in dialectic, the meager record of his teaching suggests that he never
attained wide recognition in his own day. Roscelin was not the only
teacher of his generation to be fascinated by the project of paying atten-
tion to the meaning of words.
William of Champeaux forced the young Peter Abelard to develop
ideas about dialectic that went far beyond those of Roscelin, whose school
at Loches could not compare to the more sophisticated establishments in
and around Paris. William was more loyal than Roscelin to the traditions
of Boethius in teaching dialectic, but he was prepared to become aware
of the new vocalist emphasis on the meaning of words in dialectic. Simply
to label him a realist does an injustice to his teaching, which was con-
cerned with much more than the issue of universals. After Abelards ar-
gument with William around 1109, William transferred his attention away
from dialectic and rhetoric to theological, ethical, and pastoral concerns.
Abelards Dialectica, probably completed by 1117/18, is the composi-
tion of a young but ambitious teacher, determined to outshine William
of Champeaux. Whereas William always treats the explanations offered
by Boethius with respect, Abelard is impatient with what he considers to
be his teachers excessive respect for the correct meaning of individual
words. While the Glosule on Priscian had become recognized as an au-
thoritative source of teaching about the meaning of words by William of

Champeaux and his disciples, Abelard wishes to go much further in ap-
plying some of its insights about the causes behind words to rational
discourse as whole. There are clearly limitations to the Dialectica, which
is based on a close reading of a relatively restricted range of texts and is
shaped by sustained debate with the arguments of William of Champeaux.
The Dialectica may not represent Abelards nal thinking about any sub-
ject, but it effectively announces him as the most brilliant theorist in the
discipline to have emerged since the time of Boethius.
4
Heloise and Discussion

about Love
B y late 1115, a major upheaval was beginning to shake Abelards ac-

ademic career. Having established himself as an authority on dialect-
ical argument, he became obsessed with Heloise, whom he saw as living
out philosophical principles in a way that he could only admire. At her
instigation, they started to talk about the ethics of true friendship. In the
process, he found himself abandoning traditional ideals of sexual purity
to gratify his desire. In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard presents the story
of his early relationship with Heloise and its dramatic conclusion as one
of the catastrophes that changed the direction of his life but ultimately
served a greater good. The story of their early liaison generated rumors
that Abelard was still trying to quell in the early 1130s. We get some idea
of the hostility Abelards behavior generated from comments made by
Roscelin of Compie`gne in a letter written only a few years after the events
it describes:
I have seen indeed in Paris that a certain cleric called Fulbert welcomed
you as a guest into his house, fed you as a close friend and member of the
household, and also entrusted to you his niece, a very prudent young
woman of outstanding disposition, for tuition. You, however, were not so
much unmindful as contemptuous of that man, a noble and a cleric, a
canon even of the church of Paris, your host and lord, who looked after
you freely and honorably. Not sparing the virgin entrusted to you whom
you should have taught as a student and whipped up by a spirit of unre-
strained debauchery, you taught her not to argue but to fornicate. In one
58
heloise and discussion about love 59
deed you are guilty of many crimes, namely, of betrayal and fornication,
and a most foul destroyer of virginal modesty. But God, the Lord of ven-
geance, the God of vengeance, has acted freely [Ps. 93:1]; he has deprived
you of that part by which you had sinned.1
Roscelins account well illustrates the sense of outrage felt by those who
considered that Abelard had taken advantage of a student under his care.
In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard does not deny that his behavior was
wrong or that his subsequent punishment was unjustied. He emphasizes
that the entire episode was one of uncontrolled passion and a distraction
from his philosophical career.
Heloise was the brilliant niece of Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral of
Notre-Dame. She enjoyed a great reputation for her knowledge of letters,
making her very famous throughout the kingdom.2 Peter the Venerable
(ca. 10941156) conrms what Abelard has to say about the extent of
her reputation in a letter that he wrote to her sometime after Abelards
death in 1142, although passing over the circumstances behind her entry
into monastic life.3 Peter implies that she must have been at least the
same age as himself, if not slightly older. The tradition that she was born
in 1100, and thus was only a teenager when she met Abelard, is a pious
fabrication from the seventeenth century, without any rm foundation.
In 1115, she is more likely to have been around twenty-one years old,
while Abelard was then thirty-six.
Little is known for certain about her background other than that she
was educated at the royal Abbey of Ste.-Marie, Argenteuil, and that Ros-
celin says her uncle was of noble birth.4 The dowry required to maintain
girls at old established abbeys such as Argenteuil was generally so large
that it excluded those of more modest means from being educated there.
Heloise, quite possibly of illegitimate birth, left no record of her fathers
name in the necrology of the Paraclete, only that of her mother. Perhaps
in 1113, when she heard that Abelard was now teaching in Paris, she
decided to move from Argenteuil so as to board with her uncle within
the cathedral cloister of Notre-Dame. Fulbert was committed to furthering
her studies, quite possibly with the expectation that she would subse-
quently rise to a high position within monastic life. Staying within the
cathedral cloister provided her easy access to a wider range of books than
would have been available to her at Argenteuil, as well as to a more
exciting intellectual environment. She may also have heard about the
presence there of Peter Abelard.
In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard gives the impression that their
liaison was entirely the result of considered calculation on his part:
Considering everything which customarily binds lovers, I thought I could

more easily link her to me in love, and believed that I could do this very
easily. I was then of such a name and so distinguished in youth and ap-
pearance that I did not fear being rejected by any woman whom I might
deem to love. I thought that this girl would all the more willingly consent
to me as I knew that she possessed and loved such knowledge of letters;
and that while we were separated, we could be present to each other
through mediating writings, and could write many things more boldly than
speak them, and thus our conversations could always be delightful.5
There is much that Abelard glides over in this short paragraph. We gain
no sense of Heloises initiative in developing the relationship, or of the
length of time taken up by this exchange of messages before he obtained
lodgings within the house of Canon Fulbert in return for being her tutor.
Instead, he dwells on what he presents as a selsh desire for sexual grat-
ication that drove him to engage with her in conversation and corre-
spondence. He gives no indication of any twists and turns in their rela-
tionship, but rather dwells on their physical debauchery. We were joined
as one, rst in the house, and then in spirit. His account constructs a
sexual fantasy, in which love (amor) caused all study to be forgotten.6 He
recalls his passion for Heloise as a distraction from philosophy, which
started to become tedious to him, and that creativity turned instead to
songs about love, that are still, as you yourself know, known and sung
in many regions, especially by those who enjoy a similar form of life.7
The entire account is presented as a moral example, like that of Mars and
Venus, of how debauched behavior will ultimately always be exposed.
Abelard was obliged to leave his lodgings and nd alternative accom-
modation. Soon after, however, Heloise wrote Abelard in the greatest
exaltation to report that she had become pregnant, and to ask what
should be done. Abelards narrative steers away from his own reaction to
these developments. All he says is that one night, when Fulbert was away,
he spirited her out of the house and sent her to Brittany to stay with his
sister, where she remained until she gave birth to a child, whom she called
Astralabe. From a later letter, we learn that she made this escape disguised
as a nun.
Abelards account creates the impression that this was one long period
of sexual indulgence. He gives little attention to what they talked about
in their discussions and literary exchanges, emphasizing only that his be-
havior was one of foolish passion. After he had sent Heloise to Brittany,
he confessed to her uncle that he had been betrayed by love (amor) and
that he would make whatever amends he could. What had happened was
not surprising for anyone who had experienced the power of love and
who called to mind into what ruin women had pulled down the greatest
men from the beginning of humankind.8 He then offered to marry He-
loise and thus legitimize their relationship.
The account of their physical debauchery is then matched by an
equally lengthy presentation of her arguments against marriage, based on
two main reasons: the danger and the disgrace it would cause for himself.
Without making clear if he is quoting from a letter that she sent, or
reconstructing from memory arguments that she had made, he reports her
claim that if he would not heed the advice of Paul about avoiding the
yoke of marriage, she should heed the teaching of the pagan philosophers
about the burdens of the marital state, as reported by Jerome. Abelard
presents Heloise as totally committed to a classical ethical ideal of phi-
losophy as a way of life to which everything else should be sacriced. Of
particular signicance for the subsequent evolution of his thought is her
argument that for those who were truly monks, this commitment was
motivated by love of God, just as the ancient philosophers were inspired
by love of wisdom. He attributes to her the argument that among all
peoples, pagan as much as Jewish or Christian, there were always some
who outshone others either by their faith or by their way of life, whether
they were called Nazarenes or philosophers. If laypeople and pagans, not
bound by any religious profession, could live in this way, how much the
more should you, a cleric and canon, do the same, so that you do not
prefer sordid pleasures to the divine ofce, so that you do not plunge
headlong into this Charybidis, so that you do not drown disgracefully
without hope of return in such debauchery.9 She reminded him also that
Socrates had been married. According to a story told by Jerome, after
receiving a round of invective from his wife, Xanthippe, who poured water
over his head, Socrates acknowledged, After this thunderstorm, I knew
rain would follow.
Because Abelard cites many (although not all) of the quotations he
attributes to Heloise in his Theologia Christiana, written in the early 1120s,
it has often been thought that her warnings about the incompatibility of
marriage with philosophy must have been invented by Abelard long after
the event. Yet there is much in his report that seems unnatural or incom-
plete and that suggests he was simply being selective in his recollection
of what she had to say. He does mention one argument, without fully
articulating its ethical foundation, that is certainly from Heloise, namely,
that it would be dangerous for her to marry him and that it would be
dearer for her and more honorable for me to be called friend rather than
wife, so that grace alone would keep me for her, not any tie of the bond
of marriage.10 The word amica that she uses here (sometimes translated
mistress) evokes an ideal of friendship very different from the image of

irrational passion evoked by Abelard in his account of their early rela-
tionship. In her initial response to this account, Heloise observes that he
has not fully understood the ethical principles based on love underpinning
her argument: You did not disdain to expound several reasons by which
I tried to persuade you away from marriage and an ill-starred union, but
you kept quiet over much of what I said about preferring love to marriage,
freedom to chains. As God is my witness, if Augustus, ruler of the whole
world, deigned to honor me with marriage and conferred on me the whole
world, to possess forever, it would seem worthier to me to be called your
prostitute than his empress.11 She rejects his implication that their early
affair had been motivated solely by physical desire. She insists that her
love was not motivated by any external reward or selsh lust, and quotes
an argument attributed by Cicero in the De inventione to Aspasia, the
philosopher, in which she tells Xenophon that he will always be looking
for the best of wives, and his wife, the best of husbands. Heloise is aware
that many had been uncertain about whether she had been driven by love
or lust. She insists that she had always been seless in her devotion to
him. When you sought me out for foul pleasures, you showered me with
frequent letters, you placed Heloise through frequent song on the lips of
everyone; every marketplace, every house echoed my name. How much
more rightly you should now arouse me to God, as then you aroused me
in lust.12 Heloises ideal of amor as demanding true friendship, without
concern for self-interest, is very different from Abelards understanding of
amor as irrational passion, at least as he presents it in the Historia cal-
amitatum. She feels that he has betrayed the ethical ideals that she
thought they had shared in the messages of love that they once ex-
changed.
The Epistolae duorum amantium
The love letters to which Heloise refers at the end of her rst response
to the Historia calamitatum are documents to which she attaches great
importance for their declarations of love. Whereas Abelard dismisses his
love songs as a distraction from philosophy, she is more positive in her
attitude to the way she thought he could combine philosophical and lit-
erary gifts. Unlike most philosophers, he was endowed with gifts for com-
position and for singing: As if for a kind of game, resting from philo-
sophical exercise, you composed many verses in the meter and rhythm of
love, which are recalled on the lips of everyone because of the great
sweetness of composition and melody, so that the sweetness of the melody

does not allow even the uneducated to forget you.13
There has been much debate about the letters and poems referred to
both by Abelard and by Heloise. A common tendency has been to assume
that they were about worldly love and thus had little to do with broader
philosophical concerns. Fascinating insight into the way in which love
letters can be shaped by literary and philosophical themes, however, is
provided by a collection of over one hundred anonymous love letters and
poems that were copied out by a monk of Clairvaux in the late fteenth
century and known as the Epistolae duorum amantium. In his edition of
these letters, Ewald Konsgen convincingly argued that the contrasting
vocabulary and prose styles of the two voices in the exchange, one of a
famous teacher and the other of a remarkably literate young woman, a
student of philosophy, are so distinct that it seems highly unlikely that
the collection could have been composed by a single author.14 Unlike her
teacher, the young woman employs a monastic style of rhyming prose,
advised against by theorists of the ars dictaminis in the second half of the
twelfth century but once very popular in the eleventh century and still
practiced within the twelfth century in monastic circles. This young
woman makes a conscious effort, however, to lace this older prose style
with elaborate allusion to phrases from classical authors. This is evident
in letter 49 when she professes, in a particularly extravagant and crafted
sentence, her incapacity to respond adequately to someone for whom she
has enormous respect:
It is very rash of me to send studied phrases to you, because even someone
learned right down to his ngertips, who has transformed every artistic
arrangement into habit through long-established practice, would not be
capable of painting a portrait of eloquence orid enough to justly deserve
being seen by so great a teacher (a teacher so great, I declare, a teacher of
virtue, a teacher of character, to whom French pigheadedness rightly yields
and for whom at the same time the haughtiness of the whole world rises
in respect, that anyone who considers himself even slightly learned would
be rendered completely speechless and mute by his own judgment), much
less myself, who hardly seems adept at tries which neither taste of nibbled
nails nor bang the desk [Persius, Satires 1. 106].
Her allusion to francigena cervicositas and tocius mundi superciliositas yield-
ing to recognize his greatness suggests that this teacher is both an outsider
to France (in other words, the royal domain) and someone who has now
attained great fame. In the letter that follows (50), he so admires her
discussion of love that he describes her as the only disciple of philosophy
among all the young women of our age, the only one on whom fortune
has completely bestowed all the gifts of the manifold virtues. . . . I admire
your talent, you who discuss the rules of friendship so subtly that you
seem not to have read Tully but to have given those precepts to Tully
himself! Although the teacher is expert in the terminology of dialectic,
which he uses to modify Ciceros denition of friendship (letter 24), her
expertise lies more in rhetorical eloquence and ethical theory. The ex-
tensive literary allusions within this exchange are fully consistent with
these letters being written in the early twelfth century. Konsgen found no
literary allusions to any poet after Marbod of Rennes (d. 1123) and con-
cluded simply that they were written in the rst half of the twelfth century
by a couple like Abelard and Heloise. The absence of any allusion to
Aristotles Ethics, so inuential in all ethical discussion in the thirteenth
century and later, compared to the strong presence of Ciceronian ethics,
argues strongly against the exchange having been composed after the
twelfth century.15 While individual love letters, written in Latin, were
sometimes included as models of style by theorists of prose composition
in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Epistolae duorum aman-
tium testify to the practice of the art of composition (ars dictaminis), al-
ready richly developed in the eleventh century before theorists of the art
sought to impose precise Ciceronian rules in epistolary manuals, rst
widely inuential in France after the mid-twelfth century.16
There are many features in the vocabulary and ideas raised within these
love letters that are fully consistent with their being a record of the early
exchange of messages between Abelard and Heloise. Analyzing them in
terms of whether they are genuine or articial literary exercises (Stil-
ubungen) presents a false dichotomy. The two parties compete with each
other to demonstrate their mastery of prose composition as much as to
voice their thoughts. There is an internal evolution of style within these
letters. While those of the young woman do not have the maturity of
Heloises famous letters, in which she reserves rhyming prose for moments
of high intensity, they provide a fascinating insight into the literary ca-
pacity of an intelligent young woman who is still experimenting with her
craft. As with all medieval letter collections, it is impossible to know for
certain how much letters may have been edited by the person who trans-
ferred them from wax tablet to parchment. What matters is that these
Epistolae duorum amantium enable us to hear the voice of an educated
young woman without the distortion presented by the Historia calamita-
tum. The traces preserved in a fteenth-century notebook provide an
insight into a relationship between two literate individuals with greater
depth than Abelards more famous narrative.
As is standard in the genre, these love letters do not identify the sender
or recipient by name. Nonetheless, the two parties each reveal distinct

intellectual and literary identities. The teacher is clearly very skillful in
composing metrical verse along classical patterns. The woman only picks
up this craft in the second part of the exchange. Her letters are often
more carefully wrought in that they seek to knit together imagery and
ideas that one might think were very difcult to combine. Thus she em-
ploys more religious imagery to express her feelings. No fewer than eight
separate allusions to letters of Jerome have been detected in her corre-
spondence, but none in his.17 She is much more fond than her lover of
appealing to God as her witness to the sincerity of her love, and adapts
phrases from the liturgy and the Song of Songs to express her feelings.
She combines classical and religious imagery with rhyming prose to create
her distinct prose style.
A striking feature of this exchange is the contrast between the teachers
largely Ovidian understanding of amor as a passion that he subjectively
experiences and her attempt to fuse Ovidian, Ciceronian, and religious
imagery. She sees her love not just as passionate amor but as dilectio, love
that actively cares for another, combing eros and agape. There is a religious
idealism to her writing about love not present in the same way in his
messages. She combines allusion to passionate love with reference to an
eternal reward, understood in a physical way as the viriditas of eternal
happiness:
To her hearts love, more sweetly scented than any spice, she who is his in
heart and body: the freshness of eternal happiness as the owers fade of
your youth. (letter 1)
By contrast, he employs philosophical terms, singularis and unicus, to em-

phasize her uniqueness and stresses his desire for physical union with his
beloved:
To the singular joy and only solace of a weary mind, that person whose life
without you is death: what more than himself, insofar as he is able in body
and soul. (letter 2)
This interplay between religious imagery in the womans letters and the
mans emphasis on her uniqueness continues in the brief extracts pre-
served from the rst part of the exchange. She quotes from a hymn or
prayer, May the ruler of heaven mediate between us (3), while he then
describes her as his only one to be loved above all things (4). After she
asks the Giver of all art to endow her bosom with philosophical art . . .
according the consent of my will (5), he develops a favorite theme that
she is his star, the light by which he lives, and that he is compelled to
write by the burning ame of love (6). Although they both call each
other beloved (dilecte), he does not employ the scriptural term dilectio
(love that operates through an act of choice) at all in the rst half of the
exchange. In letter 18, she reverses the order of a standard greeting, An
equal to an equal . . . and proclaims that my breast burns with love
(amoris fervore), but then bids him farewell as omnis dilectio mea, my heart
and body and all my love (Vale, cor et corpus meum et omnis dilectio mea).
Throughout the dialogue, he pushes his passion at the same time as she
seeks to preserve a spiritual dimension to her own love, in the process
heightening its erotic power.
The man uses dilectio to describe his love for the rst time only in
letter 50, in response to a particularly elaborate letter (49) in which the
woman protests that while people love others for various reasons, her love
(dilectio) is not based on any pursuit of pleasure or wealth but only on
true friendship. In his reply, praising her as the only female disciple of
philosophy among all the girls of our age, he rightly observes that she
has gone beyond Cicero. Whereas Cicero had only spoken of love be-
tween men, she relates ideals of friendship to the true amor and dilectio
that should prevail between a man and a woman.
She occasionally tries to relate philosophical vocabulary to love, as we
see in her unusual turn of phrase, equipolenter te diligo (in either case, I
love you). In this particular letter (21) she attempts a philosophical
greeting whose meaning is far from clear: To her beloved, special from
experience of the thing itself: the being which she is (Dilecto suo speciali,
et ex ipsius experimento rei: esse quod est). She repeats the epithet special
beloved above everyone (pre cunctis specialis dilectus) in letter 76. Her use
of specialis contrasts with his preference for singulus to describe her unique-
ness. The contrast suggests that he is a dialectician, for whom specialis has
a specic meaningnamely, that which is distinct to a species rather than
to an individualwhile she uses specialis in the less technical sense of
special. This linguistic contrast is repeated in the greeting with which
Heloise introduces her third letter to Abelard: To him who is hers spe-
cially, she who is his singularly (Suo specialiter, sua singulariter).18 In her
initial response to the Historia calamitatum, Heloise prepares a salutation
in which she moves from greeting Abelard in the most general terms
possible to the most specic: To her master, or rather her father, husband
or rather brother, his maidservant or rather daughter, his wife or rather
sister, to Abelard, Heloise. In her second letter, she attempts to be more
specic in identifying him as an individual: To her only one after Christ,
his only one in Christ. The phrase Suo specialiter, sua singulariter suc-
cinctly recalls the contrast in the way that they address each other in the
love letters, their two different ways of making the same basic point,
namely, that each of them was special or unique to the other. For Bernard
of Clairvaux, singularitas (uniqueness) is a pejorative term, implying dis-
tance from an ideal of noble universality.19 The male lover, like Abelard,
considers uniqueness to be a positive rather than a negative attribute.
We get a clearer sense of the male lovers identity as someone attempt-
ing to combine dialectic with ethical concerns in letter 24, in which he
responds to her frequent question: What is love? (Quid amor sit). His
solution is to connect a few phrases of Cicero about friendship with only
very small modication to make it relate to amor rather than to amicitia:
Love is therefore a particular force of the soul, existing not for itself nor
content by itself, but always pouring itself into another with a certain hun-
ger and desire, wanting to become one with the other, so that from two
diverse wills one is produced without difference.
This notion of amor as a force of the soul that longs for its natural end
modies an idea that Augustine had used in the De trinitate to explain
that caritas, the highest form of love, is embodied in the Holy Spirit.
Letter 24 links this Augustinian idea of love as a force of the soul to
Ciceros understanding of friendship as a longing for union in harmony
of will. Cicero had raised the theme of harmony of the will both in his
De inventione and in his De ofciis, in which he comments that in friend-
ship each person delights in equal measure in the other and that wills are
so much the same that it makes one will out of many.20 Cicero repeats
this idea that friendship makes one soul from many in his De amicitia.21
Cicero had spoken more of amicitia than amor, a concept that Ambrose
and Augustine had tended to use to mean any kind of longing, as distinct
from the purer kind of love, dilectio, a movement of the spirit, enjoined
by Scripture.22 In letter 24, however, the Ciceronian denition is modied
to emphasize that love creates a single will indifferenter. The same phrase
is used in letter 16: as the well-being of each of us is made a shared
concern without difference (quo in unius nostrum salute res communis in-
differenter agitur). While Augustine had once used the word indifferenter
to explain that the three persons of the Trinity were not different, as
distinct from being identical, Boethius employed the term more often in
his commentary on the Periermeneias to explain complete similarity, with-
out assuming identity.23 In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard tells us that
he had forced William of Champeaux to accept that two identical indi-
viduals are the same indifferenter rather than essentialiter. In the Logica
Ingredientibus, Abelard goes further in rejecting Williams position that
a universal is a thing, predicated not differently of different individuals.24
This modication of Cicero with the vocabulary of dialectic is further

evident in letter 24, in which the teacher uses a passage of the De amicitia
to argue that while love may be a universal thing, it exists in reality only
between himself and his beloved:
Know that although love may be a universal thing, it has nevertheless been
condensed into so conned a place that I would boldly assert that it reigns
in us alonethat is, it has made its very home in me and you. For the two
of us have a love that is pure, nurtured, and sincere, since nothing is sweet
or carefree for the other unless it has mutual benet. We say yes equally,
we say no equally, we feel the same about everything. This can be easily
shown by the way that you often anticipate my thoughts: what I think
about writing you write rst, and, if I remember well, you have said the
same thing about yourself.25
Effectively, the lover implies that the only true universal thing shared
between two identical individuals is their love for each other. He adapts
the one passage of Ciceros De amicitia that Abelard includes alongside a
host of patristic quotations in the Sic et non (SN 138.21) to discuss
whether caritas, once acquired, can ever be lost. Here Abelard quotes the
passage alongside Ciceros denition of friendship in the De inventione
about friendship as a harmony of wills, a will toward another, desiring
someone elses good, and reciprocated with an equal will, again alluded
to in letter 24.26 The inclusion of the phrase universal thing shows that
this lover transforms a denition of Cicero with terminology of dialectic,
in a distinct way. In his early writing, notably in the Dialectica, Abelard
was not averse to using the phrase universal thing (res universalis), al-
though he would subsequently eliminate this terminology from the Logica
Ingredientibus.27 In letter 24, the lover focuses not on Ciceros argument
about the obligations of friendship but on the metaphysical character of
a love already perceived to exist as a harmony of the minds of the two
lovers. He implies that in a world of distinct individuals, only between
himself and his beloved is there a true universal. The Ciceronian de-
nition of love as goodwill to another is one that Abelard himself draws
upon within his Collationes and expands on within the Theologia Scho-
larium to distinguish true love (amor honestus) from false love or lust
(cupiditas), which is shameful.28
The womans response to her question in letter 25 is much less de-
pendent than that of her teacher on the words of Cicero, although she
does pick up on the Ciceronian argument that true friendship is not con-
cerned with personal gain. Rather than saying that love exists between
them, she distinguishes between true love that is lasting and false love
that is ckle and does not endure. She does not concern herself with the
love of God; she sees love not as something they possess but as a debt
perpetually owed, which neither of them has as yet fully implemented:
You know, my hearts love, that the services of true love are properly
fullled only when they are continually owed, in such a way that we act
for a friend according to our strength and not stop wishing to go beyond
our strength. She is also more aware than he is of the range of possible
vocabulary about love: And even if we show perfect kindness [integram
caritatem] to everyone, we still do not love everyone equally; and what is
general for everyone is made particular for certain people. It is one thing
to sit at the table of a prince, another to be there in order to advise him,
and a greater thing to be drawn out of love [ad amorem trahi], rather than
just being invited to a gathering. She develops this theme that true love
is based not on riches or pleasure at length in letter 49: You know,
greatest part of my soul, that many people love each other for many
reasons, but no friendship of theirs will be as constant as that which stems
from integrity and virtue and from deep love. For I do not consider the
friendship of those who seem to love each other for riches and pleasures
to be durable at all. This rejection of wealth is a running ethical theme
throughout her letters. In a poem (82), she invokes the idea: If I could
have all that Caesar ever owned / Such wealth would be of no use to
me. The notion of true love rejecting the wealth of Caesar occurs in a
poem attributed to a young woman that circulated in the early twelfth
century alongside love poetry by Marbod of Rennes.29 We see in this poem
a simpler version of the consistent theme of Heloise that true love does
not seek material reward. She is more aware than Abelard of this teaching
about the selessness of true love, derived from ideals of both Scripture
and Cicero.
The response of the articulate young woman to her own question about
the nature of amor deserves to be compared to other debates about the
nature of love that were taking place in the early twelfth century. Au-
gustine had often viewed amor as potentially base or depraved, and pre-
ferred the term caritas, or an affect of the spirit to enjoy God for his own
sake. In giving a more positive evaluation to amor, she shares an attitude
in a number of poets in the early twelfth century. Her theme that God
attests and supports her love, rather than condemns sensual love, is not
unlike that of Baudri, abbot of Bourgueil, a Loire Valley poet who had
argued that the love spoken about by Ovid in his Heroides was divine in
origin.30 There is a similar fascination with Ovidian ideas of amor in the
verse of Baudris friend and fellow poet Godfrey of Reims (active ca. 1070
1095), celebrated by his contemporaries as the greatest poet of his gen-
eration.31 Writing probably around 11211124, William of St.-Thierry

(who came to study in Reims in 1091 and would have known Godfreys
interest in Ovid) was moved to correct the teaching of the Ars amatoria
by writing a treatise, De natura et dignitate amoris, in which he distin-
guishes carnal love from spiritual love, which is of divine origin although
corrupted in humanity through Adams fall. He argues that the goal of
the spiritual life is to grow from amor to the fullness of caritas, and thus
into wisdom.32 William is critical not just of Ovid but of those who abuse
the tools of reason without appreciating the divine origin of amor.33 Wil-
liam makes no attempt, however, to relate Ciceros ideas of friendship to
a Christian ideal, the project attempted later in the twelfth century by
Aelred of Rievaulx and Peter of Blois.
Unlike her lover, the young woman in these love letters is interested
in adapting the religious image of the obligation of love, the debitum
dilectionis, based on Romans 13:8: Do not owe anything to anyone, ex-
cept that you love each other. This is not a theme used by William of
St.-Thierry in the De natura et dignitate amoris, but it is present in the
writing of Bernard of Clairvaux in his letter to the Carthusians, written
around 11241125.34 In his De diligendo Deo, written in response to a
question of Cardinal Haimeric about the nature of loving God, Bernard
develops the idea that amor is a natural affection and that there are four
grades of love: loving oneself for ones own sake, loving God for ones
own sake, loving God for his sake, and loving oneself because of God.
Whereas in his early writing William of St.-Thierry contrasts spiritual and
worldly love, Bernard connects amor to dilectio through his reading of the
Song of Songs (a text that he expounded to William only in the mid-
1120s).35 Bernard thus develops his very original idea that love for God
grows out of love of self and of ones neighbor, and thus transforms into
true dilectio, which strives for God.36
Like Bernard, the young woman is fascinated by reecting on the ex-
perience of love; she, however, relates these themes of longing not to the
love of God but to the man she loves. To describe how she would like
only a small portion of his intellectual brilliance, she fuses an unusual
philosophical concept, knowability (scibilitas), with the image of a droplet
from a honeycomb, an image adapted from the Song of Songs:
If a droplet of knowability trickled down to me from the honeycomb of
wisdom, I would try with every effort of my mind to portray in the jottings
of my letter various things with a fragrant nectar for your nourishing love.
But throughout all Latinity, no phrase has yet been found that speaks clearly
about how intent on you is my spirit, for God is my witness that I love you
with a sublime and exceptional love. And so there is not nor ever will be
any event or circumstance, except only death, that will separate me from
your love.
This is no banal cliche of love literature. The phrase guttula scibilitatis

transforms a distinctive philosophical neologism, devised by Abelard in
his Dialectica to signify knowability or the power to know (a concept he
invented to explain how something may be knowable by knowability), to
a more sensual and poetic image, that of a droplet falling from the hon-
eycomb of the teachers wisdom.37 In this case, it is to say that even with
a droplet of this insight she cannot nd words (sermo) to describe her
dilectio for her teacher. It seems far-fetched to imagine that some lover
other than Heloise could have independently coined this distinctive ne-
ologism, otherwise rarely attested in the twelfth century. Letter 53 pro-
vides a particularly brilliant example of a philosophical concept being
fused with imagery drawn from the Song of Songs to express the notion
that true love is beyond denition in Latin. This is the kind of fascination
with amor that prompted both William of St.-Thierry and Bernard of
Clairvaux to develop a theological system based not so much on ratio, as
for St. Anselm, but on the experience of love.
The young woman emerges from these letters as fascinated above all
by the experience and the ethics of true love. Her lover, by contrast, is a
dialectician, fascinated by individuality, expert in crafting original images,
but less comfortable at fusing secular and religious notions of true love.
Although the young woman initially is troubled that she does not have
the teachers technical brilliance, the teacher becomes fascinated not just
by her capacity to talk about ethical questions but by the way she seems
to live out the principles to which she is committed.38 As he puts it in
letter 22:
What then shall I offer in return to equal your innumerable benets? Noth-
ing, actually, because you transcend your sweetest words with the number
of your actions and you have so surpassed them by the demonstration of
your love that you seem to me poorer in words than in actions. Among
other things that you possess in innite number compared with other peo-
ple, you have this distinction too, that, poor in words, but rich in actions,
you do more for a friend than you say; this is all the more to your glory
since it is more difcult to act than to speak.
Just as in the Dialectica Abelard had taught that one had to attend to the
intention behind words, so he nds that his own intention is now directed
totally to Heloise. At the end of letter 22, the lover makes a remark that
parallels Abelards comment in the Historia calamitatum that his lectures
became uninspired while his mind was thinking about love:
To others I address my words, to you my intention. I often stumble over

words, because my thought is far from them. Who then will be able to
deny that you are truly buried in me? . . . Envious time looms over our love,
and yet you delay as if we were at leisure.
He repeats this phrase in letter 72: I will tenaciously persist with the
same intention toward you.
While the male lover is familiar with the notion of the intention
behind words, the young woman explores the idea of intention behind
behavior. In letter 23, she expands on the Augustinian phrase intention
of the mind to reect on her internal conict between an uncontrolled
desire to write and fear that she does not have the technical capacity to
do so appropriately. Her teacher never engages in this kind of internal
debate but rather is impatient for sexual fulllment. She is frequently
unsure of her own capacity to respond to a lover with whom there seem
to have been many disagreements (letter 76): My intention has decided
this: that further conict between us should cease. She employs the term
twice in letter 79: If through reection a persons inner intention con-
ceives anything great, it is often not brought to fruition without a certain
external force. . . . For a long time, and with a blazing struggle of heart
and body, I have considered how I should address you, my graceful jewel,
but the difculty of expected failure has so far deed the intention of my
feeling. She expands upon his notion that love is through intention
(letter 88): And even if you are not seen by me with corporeal eyes as
often as I wish, hope, and desire, nevertheless you do not slip from the
intention of my mind. Unlike her lover, she uses intention as a rhetorical
device to reinforce her identity, as in letters 102, I hope with the greatest
intention of my heart that you may always fare well, and 104, Rightly
I grieve for him whom I love so tenderly and so deeply [quem tam tenere,
tam interne diligo], who never slips from the intention of the mind.
The lover is not insincere in his protestations of passionate love, but
he is more openly erotic, in turn provoking her to counsel caution. In
letter 26, he greets her as a body full of moisture and urges, reveal what
you have hidden. She replies in letter 27 with a brief but carefully crafted
series of scriptural allusions to convey the moral values that she wants
him to emulate: the spirit of Bezalel, the strength of the three locks of
hair, the beauty of the father of peace, the depth of Ididia. Only someone
with good scriptural knowledge would understand that she is urging him
to control his sexual passion by absorbing the skill of a great craftsman
of Israel, the strength of Samson, the beauty of Absalom, and the wisdom
of Solomon. The lovers impulsiveness, presumably in forcing her into a
sexual relationship, leads him to proclaim in letter 59, I am guilty, I who
have forced you to sin. The comment reveals the same ambiguity in
attitude toward a sexual relationship as characterizes Abelard in the His-
toria calamitatum. While he is fascinated by her ethical seriousness, he has
not shaken off a traditional Augustinian perception of sexual desire as
the fruit of an uncontrolled will. His talk of sin makes her very angry in
letter 60, in which she is appalled that the sincerity of her love should
be abused in this way. She invokes the liturgy of Good Friday, about God
loving sinners above paternal love (supra paternum amorem), and then
urges that they should stop writing to each other. This does not stop him
from continuing to protest his love for her.
Whatever the lovers motivation in cultivating this correspondence
with the young woman, these letters provided her with an unparalleled
opportunity to develop as a writer, and to draw together Ciceronian, Ovi-
dian, and scriptural imagery about love and friendship with all the bril-
liance of the ars dictaminis before theoretical treatises began to circulate,
specifying rhetorical guidelines about how letters ought to be written. The
art of composing letters, with particular attention to developing elaborate
greetings, had begun to develop in the eleventh century both inside and
outside a monastic context. The womans letters show how a traditional
style of rhyming prose could be harnessed to original effect. Early in the
correspondence, she makes only occasional attempts to match the mans
skill in metrical verse, as in letter 38, in which she tries to match his
ve-line stanza, each with a distinctive rhyme. While he shows technical
versatility as a poet from early in the exchange, she starts to write metrical
poetry in a serious way only after the crisis marked by letters 59 and 60.
Letter 66 is her rst major poem, an appeal to the Muses that draws on
Fulgentius, perhaps modeled on Serlo of Bayeux, Baudri of Bourgueil, or
Godfrey of Reims. This effort is written in leonine distichs (two rhyming
parts to each line), a style of verse dismissed as juvenile by Marbod of
Rennes in the early twelfth century but much used by Godfrey of Reims
and his imitators in the late eleventh century.39
Letter 69, which asks whether the man was really sincere in his tears,
is more personal in expression. The woman attaches great importance to
these verses because they express her inner feelings of sorrow and love:
Why does he come so rarely? Why does he break my heart?
Ah! I did not deserve to be so deceived.
Let not jealous eyes read these verses, I ask:
I do not want hearts full of guile to know them.
After a more optimistic poem (73), she offers a verse composition (82)
that begins with a declaration that Heloise would develop much further
in her response to the Historia calamitatum:
I send you the salutation that I would like sent to me.

I know of nothing more salutary than this.
If I could have all that Caesar ever owned,
Such wealth would be of no use to me.
............................
I will never have joys except those given by you,
And grief and sorrow follow us through every season.
Unless you give it, nothing will be salutary to me.
Of all things which the entire world contains,
You will in the end be my only glory forever.
As stones placed on the ground dissolve in re,
When the pyre set over them dissolves in re too,
So our body completely vanishes in love.
Her allusion to their bodies as bound in love and burning on a funeral

pyre hints at a sense of impending disaster, although it builds on the verse
from the Song of Songs (8:6) about love as strong as death. He is tech-
nically versatile in his prose and verse but tends to draw more on strictly
Ovidian models to express his feelings rather than to fuse secular and
sacred imagery in the way that she does. In letter 84, she draws on the
Song of Songs and Paul to express her sense of longing for a goal that
has not yet been reached, as well as of a connection to nature:
Ever since we rst met and spoke to each other, only you have pleased me
above all Gods creatures and only you have I loved. Through loving you,
I searched for you; searching for you, I found you; nding you, I desired
you; desiring you, I chose you; choosing you, I placed you before everyone
else in my heart, and picked you alone out of thousands, in order to make
a pledge with you. . . . Birds love the shady parts of the woods, sh hide in
streams of water, stags climb mountains, I love you with a steadfast and
whole mind. Thus far you have remained with me, you have manfully
fought the good ght with me, but you have not yet received the prize.
Whether or not the prize to which she alludes in this letter is sexual
intercourse or a heavenly reward, the signicant feature of her writing is
precisely the fusion of sexual and religious imagery. She also makes an
intriguing reference to a literary composition that he has prepared in her
honor:
Farewell and remember our love hour after hour. I shall repay you for your
Prologue, which you composed for me, with an act of thanks and the obe-
dience of love. Let your heart be glad; be gone whatever may be called sad.
This enigmatic reference suggests that at the time, her lover did see his
relationship as having an intellectual dimension. Is this an allusion to the
prologue of Abelards commentary on Ezekiel, dedicated to Heloise just
like the prologue to Abelards later commentary on the Hexaemeron, the
rst chapters of Genesis?
Not as many poems from the teacher are preserved among these letters
as from his student. Early in the exchange he composes a technically
accomplished poem (20), celebrating her as his star, in which each line
employs a distinct internal rhyme with its own vowel:
The star turns around the pole, and the moon colors the night.
But that star is fading that should be my guide.
This second line echoes a poem in the Carmina burana that has often
been attributed to Abelard:
The bright star of my joyful countenance
Is dulled by my hearts cloud.
.....................
In Cupids dance she excels all others.
Her name brightly reects the light of Phoebus,
And she serves the earth as mirror. I worship her, long for her,
Acknowledging her alone in this world.40
The allusion to her name may be a pun on Heloise as based on helios,
the word for sun. The poem has a more complex rhyme scheme than
present in letter 20, and seems more likely to have been set to music.
Only after her four poems (66, 69, 73, 82) does he attempt a reective
poem, this time in elegiac distichs (without internal rhyme), in letter 87.
It suggests that a whole year has gone by since the relationship rst began.
Again it picks up his preferred image of her as his sun, and of her eyes
as his stars. He picks up the theme of his own impulsiveness and again
begs forgiveness:
Forgive me, fair lady, if something I wrote
Ever made you justly angry with me:
I did not do deliberately or with reason.
It was Impulse itself that counseled badly.
If one could recall an uttered remark,
Such words, I confess, I would wish to recall.
When I bring back to mind your tears,
Beloved, I cannot hold back tears of my own.
So receive one who confesses his own faults,
Receive him, and remember his guilt no more.
This theme of guilt and remorse is quite absent from her writings. She
replies with a letter (88) protesting the constancy of her devotion. Aware
of the great hurt that he has inicted, she is prepared to forget this, as
her dilectio is a seless love:
There does not exist nor will there ever be a rm love that is turned away
by deceit so quickly. Whatever injuries you inicted on me have not yet
gone from the memory of my heart, but I shall now genuinely and sincerely
and fully forgive you for everything connected with them, so that I shall
not be upset by such injuries from you again. I shall remain faithful to you,
stable, unchangeable and unwavering, and, even if I knew all men as in-
dividuals, I would never leave you unless compelled to by force and com-
pletely expelled. I am not a reed shaken by the wind, nor shall any severity
or weakness of any kind take me from you.
She becomes more critical of his lack of constancy by letter 95: You are
not being fair to me but have changed your ways; and so trust is not
secure anywhere. This does not stop him from professing his devotion
to her, or from reecting on the obligations of love, as in letter 103:
Love cannot remain idle. It always rises for a friend, always strives for new
ways to be of service, never sleeps, never falls into laziness. These maxims
are clearly conrmed in you, my spirit; rmly persisting in the course of the
love that has begun, you always indicate to your friend with new signs how
you feel about him.
He implies that he is devoted to her because she embodies moral standards

that he does not live up to himself.
By letter 106, the relationship is being shaken by severe difculties.
He expresses regret for behavior that is not specied in these letters:
Now for the rst time I realize the good fortune I previously enjoyed, now
I have the opportunity to look back on happy times, because hope is fading,
I do not know whether ever to be recovered. I am paying the price for
stupidity, because I am losing that good thing of which I have been com-
pletely unworthy, that good thing which I have not known how to keep
as I ought.
This provokes a crisis, as the young woman in letter 107 (unfortunately

copied only in fragments) is riddled by self-doubt. She reports a vision of
an elderly woman advising her that wealth and wisdom and knowledge
are as nothing without the grace of the Holy Spirit. After a calmer letter
(109), she sends the rst letter (112) in which she greets her lover in
very formal fashion as her teacher: To her most noble and most learned
teacher: well-being in Him who is both salvation and blessing. She re-
views their relationship and acknowledges that she has been taken into
the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2) by his letters. He is someone who is
both nourished by philosophy and by poetic inspiration, and before whom
in Gods providence the mountaintops will bow down. But no manner
of speech nor way with words can sufciently express how happy I am,
that, secure yet not ungrateful, I am reaching the haven of your love.
She now just wishes to devote herself tirelessly to him.
The reader is left unsure what this great joy refers to. Is it her way of
saying that she has become pregnant and that she now wants to put the
relationship onto a new footing? Unfortunately the scribe copied only a
few fragments from this important letter, which is followed by a note,
with just an enigmatic fragment (112a), which parodies the Maundy
Thursday hymn Ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est (Where charity and love
are, God abides).
Where there is passion and love, there always rages effort. Now I am tired,
I cannot reply to you, because you are taking sweet things as burdensome,
and in doing so you sadden my spirit. Farewell.
The note implies that he is receiving her cause for rejoicing as trouble-
some in the extreme. The task to which she has devoted so much of her
writing, a synthesis of ideals of amor and dilectio, is difcult.
The nal piece in the exchange is an elegy (113) in which the lover
effectively distances himself from amor, by which he thinks he has been
seduced. Paraphrasing Ovid, he begs forgiveness: Forgive me, for I admit
that I do not love patiently. He still admires her greatly:
You alone make me eloquent; such glory has happened to

No one, that she be worthy of my song.
You are like no one else, you in whom nature has placed
Whatever excellence the world can have:
Beauty, noble birth, characterthrough which honor is begotten
All make you outstanding in our city.
So is it then surprising if I am lured by their brilliance,
If I succumb to you, conquered by your love?
This attitude to amor as a passion by which an individual is conquered,

and which makes a thoughtful person fall from reason, is precisely the
same as the reasoning that Abelard reports he gave to Fulbert to explain
his behavior. The closeness of the parallel conrms our sense that these
letters record the voices of Abelard and Heloise. For all his fascination
with Heloises capacity to reect on love as the highest form of friendship,
Abelard ultimately reverts to a very traditional view of love as an ailment
from which a man suffers. Abelards presentation of their relationship in

the Historia calamitatum as one of misguided erotic passion disguises its
true complexity.
Heloises frustration in her initial response to his attempt in the Historia
calamitatum to provide a spiritual justication of their past relationship
continues a pattern of response that is evident even within the early love
letters. She is forever frustrated by his lack of consistency within their
relationship. He continuously vacillates between passionate enthusiasm
and regret that he has been too impulsive. They are both gifted writers
who feed off each other in their messages and poems. Poetry enables them
to structure their emotions through crafted metrical verse. The exchange
is much more, however, than an opportunity to display skill in the art of
composition. It records a debate about love that is subtly different from
the classical models available to the two lovers. She is more consciously
spiritual in her ideal of love in seeking to combine religious imagery with
the values of Cicero and the poetic eloquence of Ovid. The nal lament
(113) ts into the tradition of the Remedium amoris, in which love is
presented as passionate emotion by which the individual is aficted. It
provides an elegiac coda to an exchange that has effectively been pre-
served and remembered as a literary artifact.
The Epistolae duorum amantium present a relationship very differently
from the Historia calamitatum. Rather than simply recounting carnal pas-
sion, they transmit a complex literary debate about love between two very
different people. Copied incompletely in the late fteenth century, these
letters will always provoke debate about whether they are authentic cop-
ies, or whether they have been edited, rearranged, or even totally in-
vented by an imaginative individual. Yet they betray so many ideas and
images about love parallel to those employed by Abelard and Heloise in
their other writings that they deepen our understanding of one of the
most well-known friendships of the twelfth century. The nal lament on
amor also throws light on Abelards attitude to sexual love in the Historia
calamitatum as a folly by which he was snared.
When he wrote that narrative, Abelard was wanting to distance him-
self from the memory of love songs that he composed, which were still
in general circulation. A number of them (and perhaps also those of
Heloise) are likely to be preserved within the Carmina burana.41 There
can be little doubt, however, that their early relationship was as much
literary and intellectual as physical. Heloise sets a high store on their
discussions about the nature of love, and would later accuse Abelard of
not being true to those ideals of hers that he had once claimed to share.
Her interest in amor was shared by many of her contemporaries, whether
poets who wrote about love, such as Baudri of Bourgueil, or monks and
scholars, such as William of St.-Thierry, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Walter
of Mortagne, who theorized about the nature of ideal love. Abelards prot-
estations of love, innovative in their own way, are technically accom-
plished, but they do not try (after an early attempt in letter 24) to place
love within a philosophical or theological framework. He admires her not
just for going beyond Cicero in her thinking about love but for living out
the ethical values in which she believes. For all the originality of his
thinking about dialectic, he had not yet developed in those early years
his own response to those profound questions that the young Heloise was
putting to him, questions that he could not easily answer.
The Ending of the Affair
In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard glides swiftly over the emotional

twists and turns of his relationship with Heloise. His concern is to show
how he gradually learned that disasters can ultimately serve a higher end,
not to present his inner life in the fashion of a modern autobiography. It
is apparent, however, that even before the rupture of their physical rela-
tionship, Abelard was distancing himself from Heloise. When she wrote
to him of her great happiness about becoming pregnant, he sent her to
Brittany so that she could give birth in the care of his sister Denise. His
language implies that he did not accompany her on a journey that he
later recalls was a travesty of religion, as she was simply disguised in a
habit.42 She names the child Astralabe, for reasons that are unclear. One
ingenious suggestion has been that she devised the name Astralabius puer
dei (Astralabe, child of God) as an anagram of Petrus Abaelardus II.43 Did
she see the child not just as re-embodying Abelard but as an instrument
through which they could acquire knowledge of the heavensa symbol
of scientic curiosity? In their love letters, they frequently identied each
other as the sun, moon, and stars. Her initial idea seems to have been
that they simply live apart but continue to enjoy each others company
whenever possible. Whatever the case, her hopes were disrupted by Ab-
elards insistence that they marry in secret for the sake of satisfying her
uncle, Fulbert, and then live apart, as if reverting to their normal way of
life. She had to leave the child to the care of her sister-in-law and return
with Abelard to Paris for a secret ceremony. Even after the marriage,
Fulbert continued to abuse his niece, prompting Abelard to send her to
the Abbey of Argenteuil, where she had been raised, to take a religious
habit, although without the veil. For all the sophistication of her literary
gift, she was effectively powerless to resist the efforts of both Fulbert and
Abelard to control where she would live. As Abelard later recalls, he
continued to enjoy sexual relations with her, even once in the refectory
of Argenteuil during Holy Week.44 This in turn prompted Fulbert and
certain of his relatives to take justice into their own hands and have
Abelard castrated. His relationship to Heloise would never be the same.
5
Returning to Logica
A belard recalls that he became a monk at St.-Denis more out of

shame than out of devotion to a religious way of life, and that
Heloise took the veil at Argenteuil amid many tears.1 According to gossip
reported by Roscelin, Abelard was still visiting her and bringing her
money during those early years at Argenteuil. He makes no reference to
her, however, in any of his writings from this period. He reports that when
he rst suffered castration, he felt like those eunuchs and other animals
whose testicles had been crushed, who were therefore forbidden in the
Old Testament from entering the temple of the Lord. Returning to teach-
ing logica and divinity provided a way in which he could distance himself
from the past as well as from the scandal surrounding his affair with
Heloise.
The Logica Ingredientibus
The large number of non-monastic students who attended Abelards clas-

ses at St.-Denis created a problem at the abbey. Criticism of the distur-
bance they created prompted Abelard to move to an unnamed depen-
dency of the abbey, where he could teach without interference. In the
Historia calamitatum, Abelard looks back on these years (11171121) as
a time when he, like Origen, was able to encourage his students to move
from tasting philosophy to the study of true philosophy.2 Probably during
81
these years, he embarked on a series of extended commentaries on Por-

phyrys Isagoge, Aristotles Categories and Periermeneias, and Boethiuss De
differentiis topicis, known collectively as the Logica Ingredientibus.3 As so
often with Abelards output, we cannot be certain about when he started
this vast project, which must have taken many years to complete. It in-
volved in-depth commentary on at least four different texts and perhaps
also on the De syllogismo hypothetico of Boethius.4 Abelard revised his
Ingredientibus lectures on Porphyry at least twice, once as the Glossae se-
cundum vocales (ca. 1120) and a second time as the Logica Nostrorum
petitioni (ca. 11221124). In these texts, his concern is not with expe-
rience of the real world but with the language that underpins all argument
about the world and the images that we invent to express our ideas.
There is a distinct difference in tone between the Logica Ingredienti-
bus and the Dialectica. Instead of critical references to the opinions of
our teacher, Abelard simply says, Certain people say . . . Only once
does he identify a contrary opinion as held by our teacher William and
his followers.5 Risque examples such as Peter loves his girl are replaced
by phrases about Socrates, the traditional gure used to illustrate an in-
dividual man. Allusions in the Logica Ingredientibus suggest that he is
thinking about theological issues at the same time as he is lecturing on
Porphyry and Aristotle.6 Whereas in the Dialectica he had used the oc-
casional phrase, such as the quantity of a universal thing, at odds with
his position that genera and species are voces rather than things, he now
distances himself from the idea that a universal is a thing shared non-
differently by individuals of the same species.7 After the rupture of his
relationship with Heloise, a love that he had once called a universal
thing, he is no longer prepared to concede any form of real existence to
a universal, which he sees simply as a name.
At the outset of the Ingredientibus gloss, Abelard situates dialectic
within the broader study of the three branches of learning: physica, ethica,
and logica. Whereas he had previously spoken of dialectic as holding the
direction of all philosophy, without referring to ethics or physics, he now
explains that logic is not to be identied with philosophy but is the ve-
hicle through which all reasoning about ethics and physics has to be
conducted.8 Drawing on Boethiuss commentary on the Topica of Cicero
(a text barely mentioned at all in the Dialectica), Abelard explains that
logica, which he uses virtually as a synonym for dialectic, is about both
the nding and the analysis of arguments rather than about discerning
truth from falsehood. He criticizes Boethius for speaking of syllogisms
when he should have used the more general term argument.9 Rather
returning to logica 83
than answering William of Champeaux, he sees himself as supplanting

Boethius in providing new commentaries on Porphyry and Aristotle.
Abelards critique of Boethian terminology in relation to language as
about things becomes very clear in his opening discussion of whether
universals are voces or res. He rst mentions those who understand the
universal thing to be present in individuals as a material essence, indi-
viduality simply being a product of lesser forms or accidents. He acknowl-
edges that some people hold that different things do not share a common
essence but are the same non-differently (indifferenter). Abelard is here
alluding to the argument that he had forced William of Champeaux to
accept in 1109 but that he now criticizes with renewed vigor. While he
had himself pushed the line that individuals were not different, Abelard
resists a compromise solution that a universal is a thing insofar as it is a
collection of things, or that individuals of the same species are the same
in that they are men, leading one to conclude that as many species are
predicated as are individuals. Abelard seems to be alluding here to variants
of Williams later thinking developed by Joscelin of Vierzy and Walter of
Mortagne, both of whom emerged in the early 1120s as important masters
in their own right.10 In this new commentary on Porphyry, he distances
himself with renewed vigor from any notion that a universal has a real
existence.
Abelard rejects all solutions that imply that one can predicate a res of
a subject. A universal is simply a word predicated equally of different
individuals, signifying something about them that they hold in common.11
Drawing on insights gained from his reading of Aristotles Periermeneias,
he deepens his reading of Porphyrys analysis of predicables by introducing
the notion that a universal predicable is not just a vocal utterance (vox)
but a name (nomen) that generates a common understanding about in-
dividuals.12 This is the distinctive theoretical position that will cause his
disciples to be called nominales rather than vocales, a name given to fol-
lowers of Roscelin. Abelard interprets the predicables as parts of discourse,
of which the universal is one element, rather than as elements of an
ontological theory. He is frustrated with Stoic terminology about res for
not recognizing the uniqueness of things in the world or the role of lan-
guage in creating our awareness of these things. His target is not Platonist
ontology per se but misinterpretation of the meaning of forms and qual-
ities. He develops the argument that a general noun signies a quality of
what it names by introducing Aristotles reection on how words generate
understandings (intellectus). Disagreeing with Boethiuss claim that every
understanding has to be about a thing, he argues that intrinsic forms not
perceived by the senses (such as rationality, mortality, paternity, etc.) are

known through opinion rather than fact.13
Whereas he had previously criticized Plato for holding erroneous ideas
about universal forms or, indeed, the world soul, Abelard now emphasizes
that in reality there is no controversy between the two thinkers. Plato,
he argues, is concerned not with logica but with physica, and speaks about
forms metaphorically, as transferred from what exists in actuality within
a specic individual. This idea of translatio (embracing both metaphor and
metonymy), developed further in his glosses on the Categories and the
Periermeneias, is not present in the Dialectica, and constitutes a signicant
intellectual breakthrough, going far beyond the more narrow focus on
categories present in the thought of Roscelin of Compie`gne and Gerland
of Besancon.14 Abelard teaches that when we evoke a concept such as
man, we consider only that he is a man, not everything else that he
might possess.15 The senses generally consider what is composite, such as
a statue that might have different components. This also has theological
implications for the question of divine providence. If we speak about God
foreseeing things that have not yet happened, we cannot say that this
knowledge is empty. All knowledge is about the present and is a concep-
tion of the mind, formulated in words rather than as statements about
things that might or might not exist, an issue Abelard promises to discuss
at more length in relation to the Periermeneias.16 The digression illustrates
the close interaction between his teaching about language and his think-
ing about God.
Abelard is aware of the long tradition of speaking of genera and species
as existing in the divine mind (a phrase of Priscian) or beyond all
sensuality (Plato, according to Boethius). Yet he insists, following Aris-
totle, that genera and species only exist in sensible things. Porphyry, he
comments, had excluded singularia from his intention, although he did
deal with them incidentally because of other things. When he wrote to
Heloise, Abelard had waxed eloquent about her uniqueness. In glossing
Porphyry, he transfers these concerns to the realm of analysis without
giving anything away from the realm of personal experience. Rather than
attacking his teacher, he blames treatises of both logic and grammar, those
of Boethius in particular, for careless use of the word res when talking
about the meaning of words.17
Abelards fascination with individuality is evident in his discussion of
a species such as phoenix, of which only a single individual exists. He
rebukes Boethius for contradicting Porphyry in this respect and for fol-
lowing the opinion of other people more than his own judgment.18 He
criticizes Boethius for speaking too loosely about things; he could be
absolved if such terminology were taken as referring to the imposition of

words rather than to the nature of things.19 He also rejects those who
argue that an individual is made up of accidental features such as Socra-
titas, as Boethius called the quality of being Socrates. If this were a sep-
arate form, such forms could be extended into innity.20
A similar theme surfaces in his discussion of differentia, that which
separates species within a genus. When we say that man is distinguished
by rationality, we do not see this as a form separate from substance; we
say only that man subsists through rationality cohering to what is animal
or living. Great care must be taken by a reader to distinguish what is to
be accepted as about things properly, and what about words.21 He resists
those who say that man as a thing is both animal and its differentiae, as
if these were both real things. We may say that a differentia such as being
rational is a thing insofar as something is informed by rationality, but it
is rst of all a name telling us about the state of things.22 When dealing
with that which is proper (proprium), he observes that a word such as
horse (equus) may name that which is both male and female.23 Abelard
is having to struggle with the limitations of the Latin vocabulary of sub-
stance and accident. A skill such as counting or learning geometry is a
property that tells us about our capacity to discern, not something separate
from the person with that skill.24 Some of these themes had already sur-
faced in the Dialectica, for example, in his comments about whether a
subject remained when a part was removed from a whole. There he had
considered standard examples, such as a wall or roof from a house, or a
nail from Socrates. In the gloss on Porphyry, his preferred example is that
of removing a leg or an arm from a man. If he was not murdered in the
process, the subject is still considered to be a man, a body, animated by
a soul.25 There is a personal dimension to this reection on individuality
that is concealed behind this more abstract discussion. After Abelard had
been castrated, Roscelin had taunted his former student that he was not
fully a man since he had lost his capacity to procreate. In commenting
on Porphyry, Abelard reasserts his conviction that an individual is much
more than the sum of his particular parts.
The Gloss on the Categories
Abelard continues his theme that logica is concerned with words rather
than things in his gloss on the Categories, which he describes as dealing
with the names of all things and subjects, in whatever ways.26 He con-
siders the distinction between categories more according to the meaning
of words than according to the natures of things.27 Aristotle had opened

the Categories by discussing three types of name: equivocal or ambiguous,
univocal or common, and denominative (as in grammaticus, so named
from grammatica). As part of his comment on ambiguity, Boethius had
observed rather briey that ambiguity had to be distinguished from meta-
phor (translatio), unless it named distinct subject things (subiectae res).
Abelard seizes on Boethiuss comment that metaphor is not a property
to emphasize that metaphor is a type of linguistic usage. Boethius had
argued that some metaphorical usages are ambiguous, as when a word such
as charioteer (auriga), which normally refers to one thing, is transferred
to another thing, such as the captain of a ship. Abelard develops this
comment to explain that words have a distinct meaning through meta-
phor (per translationem). In the Dialectica, he had criticized William of
Champeaux for holding that Homer is a poet is an improper expression,
without evoking the idea of translatio as a tool to explain language. In
glossing the Categories, Abelard hints at an idea that will become very
important in his later writing, that metaphor (translatio) is not improper
usage but operates by a word changing its meaning through association
with another word. To Boethiuss example of charioteer to mean a ships
captain, he adds a poetic example: the elds laugh (prata rident), used
to mean the elds ower. He analyzes this image more fully in relation
to the Periermeneias and in his Theologia Summi boni (in which he refers
his reader back to these earlier discussions).28 A rhetorical and poetic
device is thus brought within the purview of logica.29
Abelards discussion of the meaning of the elds laugh found an
immediate resonance among his contemporaries. Thierry of Chartres uses
it in his commentaries on the Rhetorica ad Herennium and the De trinitate
of Boethius (perhaps from around 1130), as do Clarembald of Arras, Alan
of Lille, and many other theologians subsequently.30 William of Conches
observes that the phrase is a gurative and proper expression in the rst
recension of his glosses on Priscian (from around 1125).31 The image
occurs in a poem of the Carmina burana, possibly by Abelard, that cele-
brates that the elds are green and that they laugh with the welcome
bloom of owers bestowed on the world. A similar image occurs in earlier
poetry, although not precisely in the combination prata rident. In the nal
stanzas, the poet celebrates his beloved as a shining moon whom he
longs to embrace.32 Abelards discussion of the image in the Logica In-
gredientibus stimulated an important debate in the twelfth century about
the relationship between poetry and semantics.
While Aristotle had observed that a denominative is taken from the
same word in a different case, as grammaticus (literate man) comes from
grammatica, Abelard observes that the two words can be the same, as
when grammatica (literate woman) is so called from grammatica ( lit-
eracy).33 Another revealing example that he gives is of amaturus (about
to love); he comments that it refers not to a thing but to an action in
the future, just as amatus, or having loved refers to a passion experienced
in the past.34 A single person (una from unitas) is someone who is quite
separate from someone else, but unum when used as a predicate is some-
thing different. Abelard constructs his argument as a debate with those
who call genera and species things. Words (voces) do not have any
natural meaning except through being used in speech.35 When we speak
of this animal or this body, the sententia, or judgment, that we are
making is about singularia, that which is unique, not some universal
thing.36 Abelards favorite refrain is that Boethius is following opinion
more than truth or opinion more than his own judgment.37 Much more
than in his Dialectica, Abelard emphasizes that what matters with lan-
guage is the sense or force of a proposition rather than individual words.
In these glosses, Abelard speaks of certain people who interpret the
Aristotelian distinction between rst and second substances as about
things, a position that he rejects.38 He devotes all his attention to what
Aristotle calls rst substances, to insist on his theme that no thing can
ever be predicated of a subject, only a vox. Universals or second sub-
stances do not refer to a different kind of thing.39 While the vocabulary
of Aristotle about two kinds of substance is in itself problematic, Abelard
blames Boethius for following his own opinion and thus causing con-
fusion. Only occasionally does he question Aristotles statements, such as
that a quantitative proposition is either true or false, where he seems to
follow opinion rather than truth.40 He observes that statements of quan-
tity can have various meanings, such as of size, the number of certain
accidental features, or whether an action was large or small, depending
on what was being estimated. When we say that a statement means some-
thing, we do not mean that it possesses a meaning but rather that through
a statement a soul develops an understanding of something that may not
exist.41 A philosopher who speaks about numbers may speak about things
differently from the truth of things, as when Macrobius considers lines
and numbers.42 Opinions that he attributes in the Dialectica to our
teacher he now says are held by some people . . . who rely more on
authority than reason.43
Discussion of quantity leads Abelard to reect on time. Against the
common opinion that individual substances may have times within
themselves, as when we say, I have a moment, a day, or a month, he
argues that time is not a thing that one possesses. Time ows like running
water (an image from Ovids Ars amatoria).44 When we say, It is day,
the image is a gure of speech, used to refer to part of a day. When we
speak of something in the past or in the future, we are referring to what
is perceived in the mind.45
Abelards discussion of relatives takes up the theme he had raised more
briey in the Dialectica, that Aristotle sought to correct Platos rather
broad understanding of a relative as that which exists in relation to some-
thing else. When we say that substances are lying, standing, or sitting,
these terms are taken from certain positions, but these are not qualities,
as some inferred from Aristotles words, as this would create an innity
of qualities.46 Aristotle had observed that words could be invented to
describe something that had not been said before, just as (according to
the translation of Boethius), one could derive from wing (ala) winged-
thing (alatum), with the meaning of being winged (alatio).47 Abelard
develops further what he had suggested in the Dialectica about these verbal
inventions by commenting on knowable as knowable by knowability.
He criticizes Boethius for claiming that something could be knowable
without knowledge being present. If anything could be known, then there
was a capacity for it to be known through knowledge.48 A detail that he
had not observed before is that Porphyry (as reported by Boethius) has a
different understanding of knowledge from Aristotle, in thinking of it as
knowabilitythat by which something is known. The comment helps
clarify the way Heloise uses scibilitas as a synonym of scientia in her Letter
53 to Abelard.49 While he is more openly critical of Boethius than he
had been in the Dialectica, he is also more conciliatory in what he has to
say about the difference between Plato and Aristotle: Heaven forbid that
we leave such great philosophers opposing each other and that we claim
that such a great master should be corrected by his disciple as if he were
mistaken. There is no disagreement in teaching between Aristotle and
Plato his teacher, but different acceptance of what is a relation.50 His
criticism is not of Plato but of those who think that Plato had given a
better denition of relations, in assuming that they refer to things, without
appreciating Platos broader usage of the notion of relation.51 Abelard
even adds a comment that Augustine in his Categories did not disagree
with Plato and Aristotle when he observed that relation was expressed
through the genitive case, considering the force of sense more than the
property of construction.52
Abelards discussion of quality is similarly shaped by his rejection of
those who adhere to Boethius in subdividing quality into species, some-
thing in every way contrary to reason.53 Even though Boethius had used
species in his translation of Aristotle, Abelard considers this quite mis-
leading, as these different types of quality are not necessarily opposites.

For when Aristotle names species or genus in this place he does not
mean anything other than kind [maneria].54 Abelard had raised this ques-
tion in the Dialectica, but now he explains his discomfort with this ter-
minology: Boethius was perhaps following the opinion of others, at least
to satisfy an opponent.55 Abelard runs through the varieties of quality
(habit and disposition, natural capacity and incapacity, transient qualities,
forms and shapes), steadfastly avoiding all use of genus and species, even
though they had been employed in the translation of Aristotles text. He
insists that when we speak of something having whiteness we do not
understand it to have particular forms other than the quality of being
white.56 He atly disagrees with Boethiuss claim that thinness is not a
quality but rather a position, part of the category of relation.57 All these
types of quality he sees as words signifying the qualities of things, not
things in themselves. When used comparatively, they are words that gen-
erate an understanding in the mind about comparing one thing to an-
other, according to the property and cause of the name.58 The remaining
categories covered by Aristotle (doing and experiencing, place and posi-
tion, where, when, possession, opposites, priority, simultaneity, types of
movement) are covered more briey, with similar observations as in the
Dialectica. Occasionally Abelard quotes general information verbatim
from Boethius, such as that Aristotle deals with these categories more
fully in the Physics and the Metaphysics, even though in other places he
is critical of Boethius for speaking too loosely when he implies that they
refer to external forms or things.59 His broader theme is that Aristotle
always intends to show that these categories are all names or are derived
from names signifying something about a subject. Porphyry sometimes
differs from Aristotle in using certain words more loosely than his master,
but they were not in fundamental disagreement.60
The Gloss on the Periermeneias
Whereas the Categories is concerned with different types of words applied

to a subject, the Periermeneias deals with the meaning of words and prop-
ositions, how they are determined to be true or false, negation and con-
tradiction, as well as the character of modal statements (that is, when
something may be the case). John of Salisbury recalls that Abelard once
observed that whereas the Categories is for beginners, the Periermeneias is
of great depth, subtlety, and not a little difculty of words. Whereas it
might be possible for a modern author to write a treatise about dialectic
comparable to that of the ancients in content and style, it could never

acquire the authority of the Periermeneias.61 The ideas in this treatise
inform all of Abelards other writings about language. John observes that
while many of his contemporaries attempt to write something of their
own on the art, what matters is correct application to other things of
what Aristotle had to say here about the meaning of words and propo-
sitions,.62
While Abelard follows Boethius in arguing that nouns and verbs have
a twofold meaning, both about things and about understandings (intellec-
tus), his major interest is in the intellectus generated by language, whether
in the mind of the speaker or of the hearer. Different parts of speech
relate to diversity of understandings rather than to diversity of things.63
The principal reason for the invention of a word is to establish an un-
derstanding. Boethius had interpreted these understandings or passions
of the soul as certain analogies of things.64 In his own commentary on
the Periermeneias, Abelard seeks to avoid this implication that under-
standings are somehow based on things, as they may not necessarily refer
to an existing thing.
He also considers much more than in the Dialectica the role of the
imagination in generating understanding. Boethius had briey discussed a
passage from Aristotles De anima about fantasies within his commentary
on the Periermeneias, and had concluded that fantasies (imaginationes)
were quite different from understandings (intellectus).65 Boethius consid-
ered that while sense and imagination were both natural qualities of the
soul, understanding was ultimately far superior because it lacked the con-
fusion of the imagination. Boethius had presented a similar hierarchy of
sense, imagination, and understanding in the fth book of the Consolation
of Philosophy as culminating in perception of universal things or reality
itself. Abelards denial that fantasies or understandings are ever real things
in themselves leads him to adopt a more nuanced attitude to the character
of imaginary forms as gments, which have no real existence in them-
selves but through which understandings about things could be estab-
lished.66 He quotes at some length from Boethiuss summary of Aristotles
teaching on the imagination in order to emphasize that no understanding
could be gained without the imagination. He is less overtly critical of
Boethius than in the previous gloss, and shares Boethiuss respect for un-
derstanding as beyond imagination. A word or phrase generates an imag-
ination of something, through which an understanding is gained.67 Al-
though Aristotle had opened the Periermeneias by declaring that while
spoken and written words might be different even though their under-
standings (passions of the mind) are the same, Abelard modies this in
accord with his critique of identity of essence in explaining that these

understandings are not essentially the same but rather reect a similar
form of understanding.68 Aristotles remark that an understanding is not
in itself true or false relates to whether it is true or false in the minds
consideration. The distinguishing feature of humans is that we can ex-
ercise reason over these images thrown up in the mind.69
Related to this deepened interest in the relationship between imagi-
nation and understanding is a discussion about metaphor (translatio) that
is more developed than in his earlier discussion of the Categories. Abelard
uses translatio to explain how a word can have different meanings de-
pending how it is used, taking the example of the metaphorical phrase
the elds laugh. Rather than being an exception to normal language,
such a phrase shows how language can operate beyond a literal sense.70
Words only have meaning through their being applied to generate a par-
ticular understanding. Conjunctions and prepositions he now declares to
have no meaning in themselves, rejecting the argument that he had es-
poused in the Dialectica that they had an uncertain meaning. The mean-
ing of a conjunction or preposition only makes sense in relation to the
understanding of what it applies to, real or imagined.71
Abelards thinking about the verb to be undergoes a similar evolution
in the gloss on the Periermeneias. He now sees it as having no signicance
in itself but rather affecting the force of an afrmation or negation as a
whole.72 Whereas he had previously observed that the substantive verb
links the essences of things, he now interprets is white in the sentence
The man is white as having the force of one word. The meaning of is
walking in a sentence is not to be analyzed in terms of its individual
parts, but as a single word in itself.73 Such an analysis makes it quite
legitimate to construct statements like The corpse is a man. Although
Abelard had started to develop such arguments in the Dialectica, he no
longer frames his analysis in terms of a debate with his teacher, or even
with Boethius, as in the gloss on the Categories.
In discussing the verb, Abelard points out that it can never be iden-
tied with what was said (the dictum) by a proposition, understood as a
statement. In the Dialectica, he had taught that what a proposition said
was not a thing, but he had not formulated the notion of a dictum, except
in a passing remark that Aristotle had not used the phrase.74 In formu-
lating the notion of a dictum propositionis to distinguish between a prop-
osition and what it formulates (expressed by modern logicians as the dis-
tinction between a sentence and a proposition), Abelard develops a theme
unexplored by Boethius. Rather than analyzing just the verb, he is inter-
ested in the force of predication that a verb has within a proposition.
What is predicated in a proposition is not what is joined, but only what

is intended to be joined.75 Thus someone who says, Socrates is white,
says that whiteness is in Socrates. He does not employ the verb is in
any substantive sense.76 When Aristotle says that a phrase is a vox signi-
cativa, Abelard emphasizes that one has to understand that it signies
at will (ad placitum), or according to what pleases. When we say The
lion roars to mean A powerful man threatens, this is not an abuse of
metaphor but a standard extension of the way all words have meaning,
namely, through deliberate application. A proposition signies both an
understanding about something and its dictum or content (not to be iden-
tied with a thing). In a consequence such as If there is a rose, there is
a ower, the truth of the dictum remains, if the consequent is contained
within the antecedent, regardless of whether a rose exists.77 The meaning
of a word or a phrase is not a natural capacity of language, as Plato taught
(according to Boethius), but is rather the result of deliberate application,
as Aristotle insisted.78
The doctrine of a dictum enables Abelard to correct a number of details
in the Dialectica. Instead of saying that the contrast between complete
and incomplete phrases (e.g., Socrates read against Socrates reading)
is one of complete versus incomplete meaning, he now says that the com-
pleteness of a phrase lies in the force of the proposition and its cause or
reason.79 Whereas he had previously been very schematic in describing
different types of complete phrase, he now comments that these differ-
ences sometimes come down to different states of mind.80 Some types of
statement are used by poets and orators, others by dialecticians, concerned
with issues of truth and falsehood.81 With the delicate question of whether
the sense of a proposition is single or multiple, he insists that it be assessed
according to the intention and acceptance of the one who makes the
proposition.82 Boethius tended to opt for the idea that a multiple prop-
osition could have several meanings at the same time, a view that Abelard
considers is that of other people rather than his own.83 While there are
certainly ambiguous propositions, he relates their meaning to their par-
ticular dictum in a specic situation. He distances himself from grammar-
ians who interpret every noun as a xed substantive with a separate mean-
ing.84 In a hypothetical phrase such as Socrates is healthy or sick, there
is a single hypothetical statement, not a multiplicity of senses.
After discussing the noun, the verb, the phrase, and the statement,
Abelard considers what Aristotle has to say about different types of afr-
mation and negation. His analysis follows from his understanding that the
dictum, or what is said by a proposition, is not a thing in itself. Attention
must be given to distinguishing the terms of a proposition from the force
of a name or the force of a phrase. Abelard repeats his earlier claim

that Boethius had reported that Aristotle taught in the Sophistical Refu-
tations that there are six types of fallacious reasoning, but then criticizes
Boethius for claiming that in sophisms based on a univocal statement
such as Man walks (homo ambulat), man can refer both to a species
or to an individual. Abelard suggests that when man is used of a species
it is through translatio or metaphor, as when charioteer (auriga) is used
to mean captain of a ship.85 He also raises the possibility that Boethius
had misreported Aristotles teaching: I remember that I saw and carefully
reread a book that carried the title of Aristotle on Sophistical Refutations,
and when I looked for univocity [having a single sense] among other types
of sophism, I found nothing written about it. So I have often wondered
why Boethius says that this kind of sophism was dealt with there by
Aristotle.86 The comment highlights both Abelards suspicion of Boethius
and his limited access to a text that was still very rare in the early twelfth
century. By the 1130s, when the Sophistical Refutations had become more
widely known, Abelard was criticized for not reading this text of Aristotle
with sufcient care.
Aristotle had observed that negations can be made of both universal
(every man is . . .) and particular (a certain man is . . .) statements in
a sentence translated by Boethius as, Since indeed these are universals
of things . . . In his commentary on the passage, Boethius had assumed
that a universal statement such as Every man is just signied a universal
thing.87 Instead of repeating this, Abelard explains that when Aristotle
speaks of things in relation to universal statements, he is actually referring
to the names of things, used indifferenter for the names of things or words,
as in purely casual usage.88 Abelard takes more effort to distance himself
from the assumption that the laws enunciated by Aristotle about universal
propositions refer to any universal thing. While he retains the structure
of Aristotles discussion, in which particular statements are presented as
a subdivision of universal statements, he is anxious to explain that the
only things of which they speak are specic subjects.
Abelards discussion of negation in the gloss on the Periermeneias de-
velops criticisms that he had made in the Dialectica about the way Boe-
thius had oversimplied the subject. He introduces new terminology to
distinguish the two different types of negation that he had observed, as
separative (as in a negative placed between two terms) and extinctive
(negating the entire proposition).89 Thus It is not the case that all men
are white is different from Not all men are white. Sometimes a nega-
tion is used broadly, involving both senses, sometimes more strictly as
only extinctive. This helps him rene his criticism of those who say that
any negation simply affects the sense of a universal proposition. Aware

that they are relying on Boethian assumptions, he declares that Aristotle
has the better discussion of negation.90 He rejects the argument of those
who always take an indenite negative as extinctive. Against those who
claim that A certain man is not white has the same force as Not every
man is white, Abelard insists that there is an important distinction to
be made for those concerned with the force of words.91 The distinction
enables him to reject the idea that there is only a single negation to a
universal statement. White and not white are not necessarily opposites
like white and black, as the negation can work in different ways.92
The tables of contradiction that Abelard introduces in the glosses incor-
porate the distinction between separative and extinctive, which is not
found in the Dialectica or in the treatises of either Gerland or William of
Champeaux.93
The distinction enables Abelard to consider afresh an issue that had
troubled Boethius in relation to the Periermeneias, namely, statements
about possibility in the future. In particular he considers the question
whether Gods foreknowledge of an event means that things must happen
the way they do. While Abelard had attempted to resolve the issue in
the Dialectica, he now develops a distinction raised by William of Cham-
peaux in his glosses on the Periermeneias, as well as in his theological
teaching, that events in the future are indeterminate and therefore quite
different from the determinate knowledge we have of things past and
present.94
What seems to happen by chance may relate more to our lack of
knowledge than to the chance character of the event itself.95 Against
those who argue that providence implies that all things happen by ne-
cessity, Abelard holds that when we speak of Gods omniscience or prov-
idence we are speaking in a human way about a knowledge that is beyond
denition. Things in the future are always indeterminate.96 We may say
that something happened by chance (rather than by necessity), but this
simply refers to our lack of knowledge. The dictum of a proposition about
an event is not a thing that happened once, different according to
whether it will happen or has happened. For God, there is no distinction
of time. Aware that some people confuse providence with predestination,
Abelard draws on two texts of Augustine (one of which also occurs in
the Sic et non) to argue that there is a difference between providence,
which applies to knowledge of both good and evil, and predestination,
which relates to divine benets. Abelard uses this Augustinian distinction
to observe that Boethius is misleading when he identies fate and prov-
idence in the Consolation of Philosophy.97 In a discussion more theologically
sophisticated than anything in the Dialectica, he observes that when we

speak of divine attributes such as predestination, providence, and wisdom,
we indicate different ways in which we think about God, not that there
is any variation in God.98 Just as the fact that we see someone walking
does not mean that that person is walking by necessity, so just because
God foresees a possibility of walking that person has to act in that way.99
To argue that just because things are possible rather than necessary God
can be deceived is fallacious, because it fails to recognize the provisional
character of language about God.
This theological reection ows out of Abelards analysis of a universal
proposition and of Aristotles argument that something cannot be both
true and false. Abelard argued that the fact something was or was not the
case in the past did not refer to the being or nonbeing of a thing.100 This
contingency relates to a possibility for a specic subject, not to the pos-
sibility of what is said by the proposition as a whole. He recognizes that
his analysis is quite different from that of Boethius, who uses the term
denite not for something known but for something necessary or in-
evitable.101
When Abelard analyzes terms such as all in a universal proposition,
he repeats a criticism he had made in the Dialectica of those who, follow-
ing Priscian, think that all signies everything to which it applies.102
Abelard insists that it is not a signifying name in itself. The word is
invented only to apply to other words. He sees a sentence such as Every
man runs not as a proposition with multiple senses, referring to many
individual men, but rather as a general statement about individual men
indifferenter or indiscriminately.103 He is concerned to formulate laws about
how language works in practice rather than simply in grammatical theory.
Thus one can legitimately say An animal is man if the word order is
inverted for the sake of elegant expression.104 He integrates the notion of
translatio into his theory to reconsider examples such as dead man pre-
sented in the Periermeneias. Through the word dead, man is now trans-
ferred to mean corpse in the same way that metaphor operates in the
phrase the elds laugh.105 When expounding Aristotles example of Ho-
mer is a poet, he refers only briey to the opinion of those who say that
gurative predication is improper, without mentioning William of Cham-
peaux by name.106
There is a similar maturity in Abelards discussion of modal proposi-
tions, formulated in the Dialectica in terms of a debate with William.107
While he had challenged Williams argument that modality affects the
sense of a proposition as a whole (e.g., Socrates is sitting) rather than
the specic subject of that phrase, he now formulates his broader theory
of modality in less polemical fashion with what is effectively a small trea-

tise on modal propositions. As scholars have often noted, Abelard is one
of the rst logicians to distinguish between a false de sensu interpretation
of a statement such as It is possible for a standing person to sit (i.e., it
is possible for a standing man to sit while he remains standing) and a
true interpretation de re (i.e., it is possible at some time for one who is
standing to sit).108 This analysis is related to his insistence that the dictum
of a proposition is not itself a thing. When possibility is applied to a
proposition, it changes how we understand the res that is the subject of
a proposition rather than its content as a whole. He draws on denitions
of Aristotle in both the Prior Analytics and the Sophistical Refutations to
support his argument, which goes beyond anything put forward by Boe-
thius.109 Words such as possible and necessary do not refer to things
or forms, but rather co-signify.110 The only thing at stake was the subject
of a modal statement. In his lengthy discussion of the different forms of
possibility in It is possible for a standing person to sit, he draws a dis-
tinction between possibility in time and the impossibility of two things
being true at the same time.111
The remainder of the gloss on the Periermeneias is taken up with a
detailed exposition of Aristotles rules of equipollence and conversion.
These are the principles that establish statements of afrmation and ne-
gation, and the limits of when statements about necessity and possibility
mutually contradict each other. His concern is to elucidate principles of
correct reasoning. As in the previous discussion, he emphasizes that when
Aristotle speaks of power or necessity to do something, he refers not to
any form but to the sense of a modal statement.112 In a commentary that
goes far beyond the reection of William of Champeaux on the same text,
there is little polemic here with the opinions with which he disagrees. In
refusing to engage in arguments with Boethius, he distances himself from
the more pugnacious style evident in his earlier glosses on the Isagoge and
the Categories.
The Gloss on the Topics
Abelards commentary on the De differentiis topicis of Boethius, introduced

simply as On the topics, is an integral part of the Logica Ingredientibus.
Eschewing all reference to media, Abelard concentrates on elucidating
topics not as differentiae, in the fashion of Boethius, but as maximal prop-
ositions, the technique he believes was followed by Aristotle (according
to Boethiuss commentary on the Topics of Cicero).113 Cicero is at least

as important as Boethius as an authority on the principles of argument.
Rather than listing the various kinds of hypothetical axioms that underpin
different forms of dialectical argument, as in the Dialectica, Abelard con-
centrates on the larger issue of the character of the maximal proposition
that underpins argument in both dialectic and rhetoric. Aware that Bo-
ethius deals with both dialectical and rhetorical topics in the De differentiis
topicis, he emphasizes that the topics provide the foundations of probable
argument both in dialectic and in rhetoric.114 Like Boethius, he wishes to
provide the dialectical principles that underpin rhetoric (an issue he had
not broached in the Dialectica). Abelard distances himself from the notion
that grammar and rhetoric are philosophical disciplines. Thierry of Char-
tres agreed with this position, that rhetoric is civil science and not to be
identied with logic or any part of logic, in his own commentary on the
De inventione, here siding against the view espoused by William of Cham-
peaux.115
Drawing on Ciceros De inventione, another text never mentioned in
the Dialectica, Abelard develops his own ideas about the principles un-
derpinning rhetorical argument and refers to a forthcoming discussion,
perhaps his planned Rhetorica.116 His key theme is that knowledge of how
to argue is not the same as being truly versed in the rules of logica, the
science of composing arguments and of analyzing them: No one can be
a logicus who is not discerning in nding and judging arguments unless
he knows why arguments are found and once found can be proven, should
anyone doubt about whether they are strong or weak.117
Abelards denition of a proposition as a phrase signifying something
true or false and of a question as a proposition about an uncertain thing
is shaped by the terminology of Cicero and Boethius.118 Yet wherever they
dene a proposition or an argument as a thing (res), Abelard explains
that they are using it indifferently either as a name or as both words and
things.119 In his Dialectica, Abelard had still taken for granted the notion,
espoused both by Boethius and William of Champeaux, that a maximal
proposition contains within it a multiplicity of senses, relevant to all its
implicit consequences. He acknowledges this view but then rejects it on
the grounds that a universal proposition does not in itself signify a mul-
tiplicity of consequences.120 As he had explained in relation to the Peri-
ermeneias, a pronoun in a universal statement does not have a multiplicity
of meanings but makes a general assertion about a general subject. These
maximal propositions are not established for the sake of signifying hy-
pothetical consequences, but simply formulate a general rule. He considers
that the position he had once held does not sufciently respect the purely
vocal character of a topic.121 In this gloss, his theory of entailment has
become more clearly distinct from that of his teacher.
Abelard is also more explicit in his disagreement with William of
Champeaux about the nature of argument. Whereas Boethius, following
Cicero, had always referred to an argument as that which makes faith in
a thing (res) that is uncertain, Abelard now holds that argumentation
exists only for the sake of the argument, intended to make a dubious
proposition certain. An argument leads to faith and belief in a conclu-
sion.122 He expands on the theme he had developed in his gloss on the
Periermeneias, that what is said by a proposition is not a thing or essence,
developing his understanding of a maximal proposition, the underlying
basis of an argument.123 By the time of Super Topica, Abelard has moved
away from any notion that a maximal proposition contains a meaning in
itself. He explains that its potential meanings are dependent entirely on
the terms of the arguments to which it is applied.124 The truth of a maxim
can only be preserved in relation to specic consequences.125 Instead of
interpreting maxims as self-evident truths, as Boethius had done, Abelard
emphasizes that they are themselves the product of human imposition,
applied variously in different situations. They employ pronouns whose
meaning depends on the specic application of the pronoun. Just as a
predicate is always an utterance (vox) rather than a thing (res), so a
general statement such as Every man loves or Every man loves himself
does not generate a multiplicity of meanings about different individuals.126
While Abelard never explicitly accuses older authors of being wrong in
their discussion of topics, he claims that they sometimes spoke more
according to opinion than according to truth. This is particularly the
case in the topics, which deal only with probability, and which consist
in opinion rather than in truth.127 He explains that Boethius sometimes
identies as maxims propositions that are clearly not maximal for the
sake of stretching the reader. Abelard questions whether any statement
can ever signify a thing as a clear, self-evident truth. He recognizes that
while some propositions can be certain in one context, in another they
can be uncertain, issues that he promises to discuss further in a treatise
on argument, presumably a reference to his forthcoming Rhetorica.128
He interrupts his commentary on the second book of De differentiis
topicis with a long discussion about rhetorical argument, drawn from his
reading of Ciceros De inventione and the fourth book of the treatise of
Boethius.129 Following Boethius, he explains that both dialectical and rhe-
torical argument deal with what is uncertain but differ only in that rhet-
oric is based around a specic person or activity.130 He analyzes different

types of statements that might be made about a person and that are ef-
fective in formulating a rhetorical argument.131 His denition of rhetoric
emphasizes instrumentality rather than issues of truth or falsehood: Rhet-
oric consists particularly in persuasion. Persuading is moving and drawing
the dispositions of men so that they desire or reject the same thing with
us.132 This view differs from the more moralistic perspective of Augustine,
who speaks of rhetoric as persuading people of true and false things.133
Abelard runs through specic topics or commonplacessuch as where,
when, how, and with what helpthat help make a persuasive argument,
without ever dening these topics as things. The fact that his argument
here runs close to part of the commentary of William of Champeaux on
the De inventione suggests that Abelard was deliberately wanting to com-
pete with his teacher in the eld of rhetoric.134 He concludes his discus-
sion of specic types of rhetorical topics by referring to a forthcoming
Rhetorica that he would write.135
After this extended excursus on rhetoric, Abelard criticizes our
teacher William and his followers for claiming that the grammatical, or
strictly literal, sense of a proposition is different from its dialectical sense:
We do not ever want dialecticians to consider one sense in any construc-
tion, grammarians another.136 He resists Williams teaching that a pred-
icate signies some res, distinct from the subject that it predicates. While
he knows that some people subordinate both grammar and rhetoric to
logica (an allusion to the teaching of William of Champeaux), he does
not accept that they deal with the same issues.137
Abelard also renes Boethiuss denition (drawn from Cicero) that an
argument is reasoning making for faith in a thing that is uncertain.138
What is meant by res in this denition? Juxtaposing two views about the
nature of an argument, he supports the view that an argument is not a
proposition but the intellectus or understanding of a proposition that has
no meaning unless through a mental conception.139 The contrary view is
that the argument is not the proposition or its conception but those things
or terms of the proposition. In this view, based on a literal application of
Boethiuss denition, the argument is the topic or locus behind the prop-
osition. Abelards point is that the specic words constructed in an ar-
gument do not relate to logic or to the science of discourse (ratio disser-
endi) but to other, more practical disciplines.140 He is openly critical of
many arguments that Boethius puts forward, arguments more based on
opinion than on the truth of the matter.141 We call reasoning a type of
argument, that is something rationally induced to create faith, not ac-
cording to the truth of the matter but according to the quality of mind
and estimation of the person to whom it occurs.142 Abelard explains that
uncertain thing in fact means uncertain proposition.143
Exactly when Abelard completed these extended commentaries on the
Periermeneias and De differentiis topicis is not known. He may well have
worked on more than one text at the same time. Allusions he makes in
the Theologia Summi boni to discussion to be engaged elsewhere on free-
dom of the will, a standard topic of discussion within commentary on the
Periermeneias, suggests that he had not yet composed this part of the Logica
Ingredientibus.144 The allusion in Super Topica to Williams teaching sug-
gests that it is unlikely to have been written much after William died in
January 1122. Abelard often promised more than he could deliver.
Whether or not he ever completed his Rhetorica, his thinking was moving
beyond a narrow concentration on dialectic. There were other disciplines
in the curriculum on which he wished to comment.
6
The Trinity
T he years following Abelards entry into St.-Denis were enormously

productive. Not only did he return to teaching dialectic, but he
started to examine one of the most difcult questions presented by Chris-
tian doctrine, namely, how one can say that God, the supreme good, is
simultaneously Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, without implying that each
divine person can be identied with the other two. Thirty years earlier,
Roscelin of Compie`gne had concluded that even though God was one,
Father and Son had to be described as words signifying separate things
(res). In the eyes of St. Anselm and his admirers, Roscelin had fallen into
the heresy of tritheism. Abelard felt that he could provide a more elegant
explanation, based on rational argument, rather than simply on the au-
thority of Scripture or of the Fathers of the Church. The specic doctrinal
issue raised by Roscelin created a possibility for him to develop a broader
argument about the relationship between classical philosophy and Judaeo-
Christian teaching about God.
In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard insists that he was driven to nd
analogies acceptable to human reason to elucidate the divine unity and
trinity by his students, who were demanding human and philosophical
reasons for Christian belief.1 Abelards explanation glides over the com-
plex web of rivalries and debates with his teachers that prompted its
original composition over a decade earlier. In a letter to the bishop of
Paris, written around 1120, Abelard claims that he wrote the treatise
principally to refute Roscelins argument that the three persons of the
101
Trinity are separate entities.2 He situates himself in this letter as a worthy

successor to Anselm of Canterbury, who had himself attempted to explain
how the eternal Son of God, but not the Father, could become incarnate
in Jesus without implying division within God. In his Monologion, written
between 1076 and 1078, St. Anselm had departed radically from his
teacher, Lanfranc, in arguing from reasoning alone (sola ratione) that it
was possible to believe that a single, undivided supreme being might take
the form of three distinct persons. While Abelard admired the intellectual
revolution Anselm had promoted, he felt that Anselm had never grasped
the philosophical seriousness of the theological question that Roscelin
had raised, that it was necessary to respect the singularity of the Father
and the Son. Abelard believes that contemporary dialectic, far from being
a problem, can help explain how a name used of God does not signify a
thing but rather is predicated of God to signify some aspect of Gods
nature.3 Abelard hopes to provide a more convincing response to Roscelin
than St. Anselm by combining arguments from reason with those based
on philosophical as well as scriptural authority. The argument imputed to
Roscelin provides a fulcrum for attempting a theological synthesis more
wide ranging than St. Anselms De incarnatione Verbi.
Even before he had completed his treatise, Abelard wrote to the canons
of St.-Martin in Tours, defaming his former teacher and claiming that
Roscelin had been convicted of heresy at the Council of Soissons thirty
years earlier. While this letter is lost, we know about its contents from
Roscelins reply, in which he insists that he is well received in the
churches of Soissons and Reims, where he had been born and educated,
and that he enjoys respect in the churches of Tours, Loches, and Besan-
con, where he holds canonries. He also rejects Abelards claim that he
had slandered Anselm of Canterbury and Robert of Arbrissel, observing
that they are two men of good life and repute, although some of their
sayings and actions seem to be questionable.4 Roscelin questions An-
selms teaching that God was able to save humanity only in the way God
did as unnecessarily restricting divine omnipotence. He also claims that
Robert of Arbrissel breaks up marriages by encouraging women to leave
their husbands so as to pursue a religious life. Roscelins major complaint,
however, is that Abelard has not understood his argument that the three
persons of the Trinity have to be dened as separate things if one is not
to argue that God the Father became incarnate with God the Son.
While William of Champeaux had developed philosophical arguments
on the doctrine of the Trinity, he is not known to have written a specic
treatise on the subject. St. Anselms Monologion attempted to show how
one can reect through rational argument on a single divine essence, but
the trinity 103
his reasoning had been challenged by Roscelin, who had accused him of
not recognizing sufciently that there has to be something specic to the
three persons of the Trinity if one is to avoid conating their identity.
Abelards answer was to a compose a treatise that he seems originally to
have called his De trinitate but that has been edited under the title Theo-
logia Summi boni (not an authentic title, as the terms theologia or theologi
are only introduced into the Theologia Christiana to replace the more tra-
ditional divinitas and divini).
Abelard opens his treatise with a declaration that the perfection of the
supreme good is described by Christ as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (ac-
cording to Matt. 28:19) for three reasons: as Father because of the power
or potency by which God can carry out everything he wishes; as Son
because of his wisdom; as Holy Spirit because of his benignity or goodness
by which he redeems humanity through his mercy. This threefold dis-
tinction serves not only to describe the perfection of the supreme good
but to draw humanity to reverence divinity. This is quite a different per-
spective from Augustines psychological analogy of the three divine per-
sons as like memory, intelligence, and will in the human soul. The only
other teacher in early twelfth-century Paris who developed precisely the
same idea that God can be described by the divine attributes, namely,
power, wisdom, and benignity, is Hugh of St.-Victor (d. 1141). Through
Hughs De tribus diebus, this image of a triad of divine attributes inuenced
a number of other twelfth-century writers, including Bernard of Clairvaux,
without any sense that it departed from orthodoxy.5 While the De tribus
diebus has often been dated to the mid-1120s on the grounds that Hugh
must be drawing on Abelard, Dominique Poirel has argued that it is Ab-
elard who draws on Hugh.6 Given that Hugh does not argue in the De
tribus diebus against any misinterpretation of the triad (whereas he does
allude critically to ideas of Abelard in later writings), this is quite possible.
Hughs De tribus diebus goes much further than any of the sententie
attributed to Anselm of Laon or William of Champeaux in emphasizing
that creation provides a medium through which we can learn about the
nature of God. Only in his conclusion does Hugh raise the idea that when
our hearts are excited to wonder by divine omnipotence, it is a day of
the Father; by wisdom to knowledge, it is a day of the Son; and by be-
nignity to love, it is a day of the Holy Spirit.7 Poirel argues that Hugh
derives his triad from patristic tradition, in particular from a statement of
Ambrose of Milan in his commentary on the six days of creationthat
God was good, wise, and omnipotent in his actionitself inspired by a
remark of Basil of Caesarea.8 Hugh also may have gained from Ambrose
his image that the whole created world is like a book, written by God,
through which we come to know the invisible things of God.9 Another

inuence on Hughs theme that through the visible things of the world
we come to know the invisible things of God may be a relatively little-
known treatise of Paschasius Radbertus, De de, spe et caritate.10
Hugh and Abelard may both have been inspired in their image of a
triad of divine attributes by passing comments attributed to William of
Champeaux and developed further in the Sententie divine pagine, which
quite possibly transmits the teaching of William.11 Hugh dwells much
more than William on humanitys capacity to learn about God through
the created world. Abelard is sympathetic to this theme, hinted at by
William and developed by Hugh, but responds in a very different way.
Whereas Hugh talks about humanitys capacity to know God through
nature, Abelard argues that through understanding words, in this case the
names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we can understand the divine
attributes that these nouns signify. Whether or not he had read the De
tribus diebus, Abelard goes further than Hugh in arguing that pagan phi-
losophy has much to contribute to our understanding of God, the supreme
good. Perhaps aware of philosophical interest in Platos Timaeus, Hugh
develops neglected themes from Ambrose and Paschasius Radbertus to
expound Gods wisdom and goodness in creating the world. Abelard draws
on the writings of the philosophers, correcting an overly literalist view of
Plato, to make the same point.
Abelard gives only the briefest of explanations for why Father names
divine potency. He observes simply that lord refers to the power to
govern and that theos means fear.12 While he justies the uncontrov-
ersial claim that divine wisdom should be called the Word of God, he
devotes most of his attention to arguing that Holy Spirit refers to the
disposition of divine goodness or love: By the name of Holy Spirit, the
disposition of benignity or love is expressed, in that by the breath [spiritu]
of our mouth, namely, panting, the disposition of the spirit is particularly
evident, as when we sigh in love or groan in the difculty of effort or
sorrow.13 By drawing attention to the meaning of spiritus as breath, Ab-
elard situates the Holy Spirit within the realm of personal experience.
Holy Spirit can refer to what is particular to one divine person, even
though this attribute may also be common to all three. To substantiate
this argument, he draws on passages in the Wisdom of Solomon, the
Psalms, Isaiah, Proverbs (attributed to Solomon), and the prophet Micah,
berating the Jews for misunderstanding this scriptural testimony.
This is a prelude to his analysis of philosophical testimony about the
threefold nature of God. The rst authority he cites is Cicero, whose De
inventione he quotes to show that those who devoted themselves to phi-
the trinity 105
losophy did not think there were many gods. The importance he attaches
to the De inventione, which he had not mentioned at all in the Dialectica
but which is clearly in the background in the love letters, signals a new
breadth in the range of his interest since the time of his literary exchanges
with Heloise. Cicero is shown to support Pauls testimony about the in-
visible things of God being revealed to the philosophers.14 Drawing on
Ciceros discussion of arguments from analogy, Abelard argues that the
divine nature can be known not through the human soul but through the
order and goodness that underpins creation. Going a step further than
Hugh in his comments about cosmic order in the De tribus diebus, without
accepting everything that Platonists were saying about the world soul, he
holds that Platos teaching about the world soul is a metaphor or cov-
ering (involucrum) that describes one aspect of the Holy Spirit, namely,
Gods goodness toward the world.
Abelards explicit acknowledgment of pagan testimony about the Trin-
ity departs not only from the perspective of Augustine but also from that
of William of Champeaux in his Sententie. Augustine considered theologia,
or discourse about the gods, as unable to confer eternal life, unlike Scrip-
ture, which is an authoritative record of the word of God.15 Through
careful selection of texts, Abelard argues that this great Father of the
Church was more indebted to pagan philosophical insight than is often
realized. He draws on a sermon attributed to Augustine (actually by Quod-
vultdeus), in which Mercury or Hermes Trismegistus is reported as writing
about the generation of the perfect Word and maintaining that the
name of the Son of God cannot be described in human terms. Abelard
attaches much value to this insight into the impossibility of dening Gods
nature, which he links to a quotation attributed to Denis the Areopagite
about the pure in heart realizing that God cannot be known.16 Rather
than emphasizing texts about human sinfulness, he concentrates on pas-
sages, both scriptural and philosophical, that deal with the divine good-
ness sustaining creation.
Abelard was not the rst teacher to attempt to draw parallels between
pagan and Christian insight. In the late eleventh century, the enthusiasm
of a Benedictine abbot, Wolfelm of Brauweiler (d. 1091), for Christian-
izing Macrobius had provoked Manegold of Lautenbach to warn his friend
against the dangers implicit in any such attempt.17 In France, enthusiasm
for pagan authors provoked Baudri of Bourgueil and Godfrey of Reims to
adapt their interests to Christian ends within poetic writing. Inspired by
this literary movement, the young Heloise frequently combined pagan and
Christian images in her early exchanges. Abelard wanted to provide a
theological synthesis that would satisfy students who pursued such inter-
ests but was still distinct from the Platonizing efforts of Bernard of Char-
tres (d. ca. 1125) and his students.18 Abelards allusion in the Dialectica
to those Platonists who mistakenly identify Platos world soul with the
Holy Spirit shows that even before composing the Theologia Summi boni
he was aware that efforts were underway to nd common ground between
pagan wisdom and Christian doctrine. Abelard now nuances his earlier
criticism by explaining that the world soul is not a ction (gmentum)
removed from all truth, but a beautiful covering or envelope (involu-
crum, a term taken from Chalcidius) that describes divine goodness to
the world. Abelard thus explains that he still admires Plato, but he revises
his earlier condemnation of those who make too speedy an identication
between Platonic doctrine and Christian teaching.
While hostile to the idea that Platos forms should be interpreted lit-
erally, he now appreciates the beauty of the image of the world soul, not
as a specic living entity but as the force that animates and sustains
creation. He sees it as an image of divine grace offered to all people, like
a vine spreading across the whole world. Abelard never doubts the Pla-
tonist teaching, transmitted through Macrobius, Chalcidius, and other
writers, that creation is held together by a divine harmony and that ar-
ithmetica is the mother of the arts, examining proportion within the uni-
verse.19 He quotes examples from Augustines City of God about the close-
ness of Plato to divine insight in order to justify his argument that Plato
and other pagans, such as the Sybils, had grasped certain elements of the
doctrine of the Trinity, even if he had not understood the full coexistence
of the three divine persons. Bringing together such testimony creates a
very different effect from the conventional theological miscellanies col-
lected by disciples of Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux.
Abelard is not particularly interested in exploring the body and soul
as metaphors of the spiritual life other than to ridicule those philosophers,
such as Roscelin, whom he considers to be excessively caught up in their
own arguments. He uses ratio rather than amor as the basis for understand-
ing supreme goodness, understood as divine potency, wisdom, and above
all benignity or goodness to the world. Near the end of the rst book of
the Theologia Summi boni, Abelard briey commends the philosophers,
in particular Socrates, for their diligence in distinguishing between the
virtues and vices and for the example they set through their renunciation
of worldly pleasures, quoting briey from Augustine and Jerome. His em-
phasis is more on pagan knowledge, however, than on pagan ethics.
Whereas many of the Church Fathers had emphasized that the prophets
came before the philosophers in time, Abelard makes no case for the
priority of revelation to the Jews but rather holds that Jews and gentiles
the trinity 107
constitute two walls in the one body of the Church. While Augustine
had invoked this image in relation to two groups who came together in
Christ, Abelard uses it to explain that both prophets and philosophers
had provided instruction to their respective peoples.20
The second book of Abelards treatise is devoted to philosophical ob-
jections that can be put to the Christian doctrine of God, preceded by
an invective against false dialecticians. Clearly aware of St. Anselms
arguments against Roscelin, formulated thirty years earlier in the Epistola
de incarnatione Verbi, Abelard is anxious to distinguish between the ne-
cessity of dialectical argument in all discussion of divinity and its abuse
by sophistically minded practitioners. Again the key author to whom he
appeals is Augustine, whom he quotes, not always with complete accuracy,
as singing the praises of dialectic. He silently transforms a sentence of the
De doctrina Christiana about argument being very able to penetrate and
dissolve every kind of question into penetrate and discuss every kind of
question. (In the Theologia Christiana, as well as in the version of this
passage included in the Sic et Non and in the Collationes, the phrase and
discuss is quietly omitted, presumably because Abelard subsequently dis-
covered that he had initially misread Augustines text.)21 Whereas Anselm
of Canterbury had lamented the inuence of dialecticians of the modern
time . . . who consider universals to be nothing but a puff of air, Abelard
is more nuanced in the way he presents the discipline. It is a great tool
for vanquishing the false arguments of the Stoics and the Epicureans. As
he argues in the Dialectica, no discipline can ever be wrong in itself. By
targeting those teachers of dialectic lled with blind condence in their
intellectual powers, he hopes to dispel accusations commonly made about
teachers like himself. These pseudodialecticians in his discourse are myth-
ical gures, serving to assert his own commitment to orthodoxy. Spouting
words has no point unless one is instructed from within. While he is not
talking about ethics, Abelard cannot avoid reecting that ethical integrity
is essential to true philosophical understanding. The divine nature itself,
as both Plato and Augustine explain, is beyond human reasoning. By
quoting familiar passages from Gregory about faith not having merit in
anything tested by human reasoning and from Ambrose about not being
able to know or discuss the generation of the Son from the Father, Ab-
elard implies that he is not guilty of such boldness. Whatever we say,
therefore, about this deepest philosophy we assert is a shadow, not truth
itself, and like a kind of analogy, not the thing itself.22 Just as in his
teaching of dialectic he emphasizes that what is signied by a proposition
is never a thing in itself, so in theology he maintains that a proposition
can only be an approximation of truth rather than strictly true in itself.
Abelard structures the second book of his treatise on a pattern set by

the De trinitate of Boethius, even though he never specically acknowl-
edges its inuence in his initial version. While it is very likely that he
was familiar with contemporary interest in the theological writings of
Boethius, such as shown by Thierry of Chartres (whose commentary on
the De trinitate is found in the same manuscripts as Abelards Theologia
Summi boni), he is just as suspicious toward Boethius on matters of
theology as on dialectic. Abelard begins his examination by formulating
a denition of the divine nature very similar to that articulated by Wil-
liam of Champeaux.23 While he takes for granted Williams denition that
God is a single substance, without form or accident, Abelard supplies a
far wider range of possible objections to both plurality and unity in God.
Williams technique had simply been to argue that sameness in the
world effectively means that identical things are not different from each
other (rather than essentially the same). By contrast, Abelard raises fteen
possible objections put by dialecticians against the idea of plurality within
God, and another ve against unity within God, if the Father is different
from the Son. How can we speak of a plurality of persons in God, as a
single substance, when it seems that no philosophical mode of difference
can be applied to the diversity of persons? His argument is as much with
William as with Roscelin.
The remainder of the second book is devoted to expounding the prin-
ciples that elucidate the solution, provided in the third book. Going far
beyond Williams brief comment that there is simply no connection be-
tween difference in this world and identity in God, Abelard formulates
principles that can apply both to ordinary and to divine language, which
he sees as simply the extension of ordinary language to awareness of the
supreme good. The undivided nature of God, he explains, is not a thing
that can be counted alongside other things. He then goes a step further
to say that God is not really any substance, if we follow any conventional
philosophical denition of substance. This effectively destabilizes the con-
ventional denition of God as three persons in one substance by raising
a question about the articial nature of the words that we use.
As evident from his heated response to Abelard, Roscelin takes for
granted the Augustinian assumption that a word is the sign of a thing,
while stressing that a word is an utterance of human origin. He concludes
that the three divine names have to be imposed on distinct things: I do
not see how else I can put this. Many people were uncomfortable with
this terminology, which seemed to suggest that there was division in God.
The standard response, formulated by St. Anselm, was to emphasize the
fundamental unity of God the Father and God the Son. Christ was the
the trinity 109
embodiment of perfection, free from the stain of sin, and thus closer to
God than to sinful humanity. Abelards initial solution to this theological
dilemma does not dwell particularly on the person of Christ (although he
might already have had some ideas on the subject) but rather on the
different ways in which words such as same and different are used. By
developing a richer understanding of ordinary language, he argues that we
can come to terms with the seeming contradictions of theological lan-
guage. Far from being an exception to ordinary speech, the metaphorical
character of theological language reects deeper principles about all dis-
course. In the Ingredientibus gloss on Porphyry, Abelard had largely fol-
lowed Boethiuss own analysis of three basic types of differentiating char-
acteristics, namely, genus, species, and number, interpreting them as words
rather than as specic things in themselves.24 Following his reading of
Aristotle, he had insisted that specic forms that create a differentia are
not separate entities but rather cannot subsist outside of what they inform.
In the corresponding part of his treatise on the Trinity, he introduces a
quite different set of ways that differentia and identity can be dened: by
essence, by number, by denition, by similarity, by permutation, and by
effect. He introduces almost exactly the same list into a subsequent com-
mentary on Porphyry, the Glossae secundum vocales, delivered at about the
same time he wrote about the Trinity. Abelard had already established
the principle that modes of difference were more to do with words than
particular things. In the context of the Trinity, he is able to show more
fully how two things can be different in denition, for example, while
being connected through predication, as in man and animal: An animal
can be what is not a man, but a man has to be an animal.25 As Aristotle
teaches in the Periermeneias, words (voces) and letters are not the same
for everyone but are different in the way the same words are understood
by different people.26 Once we realize the different ways in which the
same words can be understood, we can grasp how it may be possible to
speak of three persons in God. To explain persona, Abelard takes up a
grammatical explanation, that the rst person is who speaks, the second
is who is spoken, the third who is spoken about, and then he provides
a rhetorical account of who the persons are in order to make the point
that in divinity the meaning of persona is different again.
These are the basic principles on which Abelard develops his argument
in the nal book of his treatise. To the key question of whether the trinity
of persons is about words or things, he explains that while the single,
undivided substance of God is a thing, the differences between the three
persons are to do with different denitions of the supreme good. They are
three in denition or property but not in number.27 A nominalist under-
standing of language helps one to understand the character of theological

discourse as about different ways of naming God rather than as about a
specic thing. Abelard structures the third book as a direct answer to the
specic objections to divine trinity and unity outlined in the preceding
section. In many ways, the technical discussion that he introduces here
is simply an extension of debates he had already been raising within the
study of dialectic. Some of the issues, however, are very basic. To the
argument that Roscelin had raised, that the three persons had to be three
things, he points out that a combined term such as Twenty-one or a
great thief does not mean two separate things (i.e., twenty and one,
or both great and a thief) but a single concept dened by the com-
bination of words.28 Logical classications cannot be employed in a rigid
way to the divine nature because these classications are always subject
to particular denitions in relation to what they analyze. Abelard is keen
to show how statements about distinct identity do not necessarily con-
tradict statements about underlying unity. Whereas William of Cham-
peaux argued that denitions simply operate differently in relation to God
from how they operate in relation to the natural world, Abelard holds
that fundamentally similar principles apply in both domains.
Many of the particular solutions that Abelard opts for in this treatise
are not ones that he keeps in subsequent versions of the work. This ap-
plies, for example, to analogies that he makes between a multitude of
persons and a multitude of ngers, which he maintains are distinct by
essence. Even here, however, Abelard has not fully distanced himself from
assuming that a noun refers to its own thing or essence.29 Other ar-
guments he does preserve, such as about the denition in the Athanasian
Creed as the Father, so the Son and the Holy Spirit, a statement that
he reads as implying that what is appropriate for one person is also ap-
propriate for another. The same might be said about proposition and con-
clusion within an argument, distinct in property rather than essence, like
divine persons.30 Although his topic is ostensibly theological, Abelard
takes the opportunity to make a serious philosophical point about identity
and difference. Just as in a human person there are many parts that are
not identical but cannot exist without each other, so there can be plurality
in the Divine Trinity.31 He also raises in passing an idea that he will
subsequently develop, that what the Greeks call substances may be no
different from what the Latins call persons. Abelard quotes here the fa-
miliar passage from Augustines De trinitate about the possible equivalence
of Latin and Greek understandings that Roscelin of Compie`gne had used
in his own writing on the Trinity and that St. Anselm had employed to
defend himself from the criticism of Lanfranc that his method of reasoning
the trinity 111
was dangerously novel. In this part of his treatise, he is relatively re-

strained in his appeal to patristic authority, preferring to focus on familiar
passages from Augustines De trinitate.
Abelards major effort is to identify convincing reasoning to defend his
thesis. He turns to Ciceros De inventione to support his case about identity
and difference: When Tully had identied deliberation and demonstration
as quite distinct from each other, he was speaking about different prop-
erties of two kinds of argument, not about any fundamental difference in
essence.32 He also reminds his reader of what Priscian, the grammarian,
had advised, namely, that in speech one has always to follow custom:
Well, indeed, since speech conveys meaning not from nature but from
the will of men.33 It is not legitimate to extend gurative and improper
speech beyond the reach of authority of custom if we want to speak for
the sake of instruction and ease of understanding.34 No longer simply an
authority on Aristotle, he is concerned with the character of language as
a whole, through grammar and rhetoric, while explaining the logic of
language about the Divine Trinity. The rules of discourse as a whole are
illustrated by the way we should talk about God, avoiding confusing as-
sertion and illogicality. False arguments arise when one does not respect
the force of the words of an argument by misapplying a logical principle,
such as Whatever is predicated of something is predicated of that pred-
icate and the subject, to a divine person.35 One cannot use his rule to
say that the Father is the Son. This is not because logic does not apply
to the Trinity but because one has not understood the rules of logic in
the rst place. Abelard refers back to his Dialectica for further discussion
of the same point, although he is now showing how these principles can
also elucidate grammar and rhetoric as well as theology.
The rst objections that Abelard deals with in his third book are fun-
damentally logical in character. He then moves to the more properly
theological question that Roscelin had raised in the argument reported
to St. Anselm: How is it that only the Son becomes incarnate in the
person of Christ and not the Father or the Holy Spirit?36 Although the
treatise is about the Trinity, Abelard cannot avoid the Christological ques-
tion of what is distinct about the person of Christ. In some ways, his
solutionthat Christ is the incarnation of divine wisdomis fully in
accord with the teaching of both Anselm of Laon and William of Cham-
peaux, who are simply restating traditional Pauline doctrine. He departs
from them in the way that he addresses a familiar concept. He insists on
looking at the force of the statement (vim enuntiationis) The Son has
become incarnate in order to appreciate what the authority of the saints
has always understood it to mean: that only the Son became incarnate,
not the Father or Holy Spirit, so that he could enlighten those predestined
to be saved through the light of his wisdom.37 Although not a particularly
sophisticated formulation of Christology, the formula hints at the way
Abelard prefers to describe the process of redemption in terms of the
gaining of wisdom rather than as a process of being freed from the yoke
of the devil and human sinfulness. He points to the words addressed to
the Father by Christ in agony on the cross to show how common it is to
refer to God the Father rather than to the Son or the Holy Spirit. All
things are done rationally, whether in creating the world or in redeeming
humanity after the fall. The Father endows us with wisdom through the
Son, while the Holy Spirit relates to the working of grace through the
sacraments and the forgiveness of sins.38 These themes are implicit in
the teaching of William of Champeaux, but here they are presented sim-
ply in terms of illuminating the doctrine of the Trinity.
The most controversial section of Abelards discussion is the second
chapter on the generation of the Word. His key theme is that the rela-
tionship between the Father and Son is like that between potency or
power (potentia) and wisdom, understood as the power of discernment. In
the Athanasian creed, the attribute that is predicated of each of the three
persons of the Trinity is omnipotence. By potentia Abelard means not
omnipotence in the sense of being all-powerful, but potency as a capacity
to act. The analogy of comparing the relationship between the Father and
the Son to that between genus and species had no precedent in patristic
tradition and might seem to imply that God the Son is less than fully
divine. The analogy makes sense for Abelard in light of the particular
way that he interprets the categories of genus and species, that is, not as
specic things but as names that signify specic attributes of that which
they predicate. He is not saying that wisdom is a part of omnipotence, a
position that would clearly be erroneous, as it implies that wisdom is a
lesser thing than omnipotence. He prefers the notion of potentia as
a potency to act, because he sees it as the genus of wisdom, the power of
discernment. Another comparison he draws is between wax and a wax
image, one of which comes from the other, while insisting that this does
not mean one comes before the other in time.
Central to his argument is the theme that these categories of genus
and species do not signify specic things but rather are linguistic devices
that serve to illustrate a relationship whereby one subject proceeds from
another but not the other way around. Just as a wax image is wax, yet
one cannot identify the image with the wax, so the Son relates to the
Father. Many phrases in the Nicene Creed might seem to contradict this
image, such as God from God, light from light. These statements, for-
the trinity 113
mulated to resist ideas that Christ was less than fully divine, Abelard reads
as metaphors that should not be misinterpreted as implying that the Son
and the Father can be identied with each other.39 The meaning of God
as the Son is not the same as God when used of the Father. Often
words are called from their proper signication by adjoining words to
mean something else, as we have shown elsewhere in dealing with meta-
phors.40 Abelard had started to discuss translatio in his Ingredientibus gloss
on the Categories. In the Dialectica, he had already criticized William for
teaching that gurative expressions were strictly speaking improper, but
he had not yet developed his theme that metaphor (translatio) was a
perfectly legitimate form of signication. As in his gloss on the Categories,
Abelard raises the example of the phrase the elds laugh (prata rident)
to argue that it is quite natural for words to change their meaning by
association with other words.41 He gives the example of this and many
other phrases to argue that when words are applied to the divine nature,
they need to be interpreted in this context.
Some of the claims Abelard makes in this part of his treatise are un-
usually bold and would never be repeated, such as that when philosophers
said born of God or Son of God, they explained the generation of the
Son from the Father more clearly than the prophets, who simply spoke
of the word of the Lord.42 Plato spoke more appropriately than the
prophets, Abelard suggests, when he called the reasoning or wisdom of
God mind. Christ agreed in particular with the words of the philoso-
phers when he spoke the words, Father, enlighten your Son (John 17:
1). Abelard favors gentile over Jewish tradition in a way that contradicts
assumptions taken for granted by Anselm of Laon and William of Cham-
peaux.
Abelard acknowledges that his explanation of the relationship of the
Father to the Son still generates many more problems than he can answer.
Some of his discussion may have been added to an original presentation
in awareness of these difculties, perhaps raised in response to his original
presentation. If by Father he understands not just potency but omnip-
otence, then it might seem that wisdom or the power of discernment is
a part of omnipotence and that omnipotence is prior in time to wisdom.
As if responding to an intelligent critic who reminds him that he cannot
simply dispense with the category of omnipotence, he replies that these
are all analogies that must not be taken literally, as the divine nature is
quite different from that of creation.43 With relative lack of caution, he
even claims that the Son, sometimes called the right hand of the Father,
is indeed a part of the Father. He suggests that it is quite legitimate for
images from the natural world to be applied through analogy to quite a
different world. None of the Aristotelian categories about the prior

could ever legitimately apply to God the Father, understood as the power
of discernment.
There is much in this discussion that suggests quite hasty composition,
perhaps dictated rather than written. To illustrate how a word might
change its meaning within a different context, he reminds his readers (or
perhaps more accurately his listeners) that Scripture has Adam knew his
wife to mean Adam had sex with his wife. He explains similarly that
exire or to go out is used to mean to force out (digerere) or purge the
stomach.44 This is the same kind of scatological humor, based on a desire
to shock and entertain, that surfaces in some of the early glosses on di-
alectic. Abelard does not repeat these remarks in later versions of the
Theologia. His more serious point is that divine potency is not prior to
divine wisdom in time because prior is a verbal rather than a real dis-
tinction. Once all our attempts at theological denition are appreciated
as linguistic inventions, then they cannot be misconstrued as implying a
theological impossibility, such as that one divine person comes before
another. As if familiar with the arguments his ideas have provoked, he
repeats a complaint that he must have often heard: But you say to me:
I am not concerned with names, but I insist on the truth of the sentence,
namely, holding that God the Father is begotten from God, just as the
Word is from the Father.45 Abelards response is to remind his critics that
this claim is itself erroneous, as the Father was not begotten from God.
Rather than assuming that each noun signies a single thing, he empha-
sizes that there may be different reasons behind the imposition of a noun
and that he is concerned with the causa behind a word rather than its
literal meaning.
In the rst version of his treatise, Abelards discussion of the procession
of the Holy Spirit is much briefer than that about the generation of the
Son from the Father. While the central insight, that the Holy Spirit is
the benignity or loving-kindness of God, was not itself fundamentally
original, Abelard emphasizes that the Holy Spirit is not simply the love
of the Father and the Son but rather the love of God for creation, pro-
ceeding through the Father and the Son. This particular attribute of
loving-kindness is the specic attribute of the Holy Spirit, which comes
through both divine potency and the divine wisdom and by which all
things are ordered for the good. The key inuence here on his thinking
is Platos teaching about the world soul, interpreted as a veiled image of
Gods goodness to creation, a theme to which he had given much atten-
tion in the rst book of the treatise. Abelard brings in Platonic teaching,
while insisting that Platonic forms are not to be interpreted literally.
the trinity 115
Rather, the form that is the world soul signies an important attribute of
the supreme good. As he had hinted in a digression within the last part
of the Dialectica, this divine benignity gives life to us through gifts of
divine grace. Abelards thinking about the Holy Spirit is still relatively
little developed in the Theologia Summi boni. His major interest is to
apply principles about predication that he had developed within his di-
alectic to the relationship between the Father and the Son, so answering
Roscelins claim that they had to be distinguished as separate things if we
were to avoid asserting that God the Father joined the Son in becoming
incarnate in Christ. When he rst writes about the Trinity, Abelard is
still preoccupied by the relationship between the Father and the Son, and
he discusses the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son
only briey. Abelards major attention in the second and third books of
the Theologia Summi boni is on linguistic issues with which he is familiar.
Nonetheless, he lays the groundwork for his distinctive emphasis on the
Holy Spirit as the loving-kindness that underpins creation as a whole,
rather than as the perfect love of the Father and God the Son. Whereas
he had previously been obsessed by Heloise as the embodiment of perfec-
tion, he now directs his attention to the Holy Spirit as the source of this
goodness and love.
Augustine gave such emphasis to the person of Christ as the point of
perfect junction between God and fallen humanity that he considered the
Holy Spirit more as the love between two coeternal persons, the Father
and the Son, than as the love emanating from the Father to creation, as
traditional in orthodox theology. The inuence of Augustine was so great
in the Latin West that by the late sixth century the controversial lioque
clause had been added to the Latin versions of the Nicene-
Constantinopolitan Creed, thus becoming a major source of grievance
between Greek and Latin theologians. The additional Latin phrase en-
capsulates a theological rift that had evolved between a Greek view of
the Holy Spirit (or Holy Breath) as Gods gift to creation as a whole, and
Augustines perception of the Holy Spirit as the love exchanged most
fully between the Father and the Son. In developing a theology that
emphasized the gulf between Christ and fallen humanity, Augustine had
moved away from the more optimistic teaching of some of the early
Church Fathers about the universe as the vehicle of Gods glory. Abelard
is fully aware of Augustines teaching about the Holy Spirit as the gift of
God, given by both the Father and the Son, and quotes sentences such
as The Father and the Son are the principle of the Holy Spirit but
argues that Augustine is speaking here about the effect of the Holy Spirit
rather than the nature of the disposition of divine benignity.46 This dis-
tinction between effects of the Holy Spirit and the affect or attribute of
divine benignity enables him to read beyond simple claims about the
working of the Holy Spirit in Christ or in the Church to reect on what
the Holy Spirit reveals about the divine nature itself.
The closing chapter, in which Abelard avers that all men naturally
have faith in the Trinity, picks up the Pauline theme that Augustine had
employed in his De trinitate and that is also so important for Hugh of St.-
Victor, namely, that the invisibilia Dei had always been apparent through
the created world. Augustine had argued that all men could naturally
come to an understanding of God as a trinity of persons through reecting
on the relationship between memory, understanding, and will within the
human soul. Abelard employs a different set of attributes, in part suggested
to him by the traditional Pauline identication of Christ with the wisdom
of God. There was a long patristic tradition of explaining the Holy Spirit
as the love and goodness of God, but generally in the context of the
mutual love of the Father and the Son. Abelards claim that all humanity
naturally has faith in God as a trinity of attributes was a bold move as
traditionally the Trinity had been presented in terms of the revelation of
Scripture to the Jewish people. This certainly was the position familiar to
Anselm of Laon. William of Champeaux had started to consider how one
could through reason come to an understanding of God as Trinity, but he
refusedat least in the records of his teachingto acknowledge the tes-
timony of authors outside Scripture and the Church in speaking about
the Trinity. Roscelins own thinking about the trinity of divine persons is
in many ways indebted to St. Anselms theological method, if not his
conclusions. Abelard takes Roscelins argument a stage further, distancing
himself from the semantic theory that every noun is imposed on a specic
thing (res). Abelards idea was to consider what the divine names Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit signify about the subject they predicatein this
case God, the supreme good.
Abelard does not think that just because faith in the trinitarian nature
of the supreme good is accessible through reason that all men are naturally
saved. He concerns himself with faithunderstood as acceptance of
something not immediately apparent to the sensesin what Christians
call a triune God. He is saying that the human spirit can grasp the po-
tency, the wisdom, and the benignity of God, the supreme goodnot
that all men have been saved through this faith. In a closing sentence,
he acknowledges that it is in the mystery of the incarnation that the
complete sum of human salvation is to be found, without which all else
is believed in vain.47 The treatise does not claim to be a complete syn-
thesis of theology. Abelard justies his work as an attempt to counter the
the trinity 117
arguments of those who attack rational belief. Only through philosophical

reasoning, in particular through dialectic, can one counter arguments that
are clearly wrong: Out of your own mouth I judge you, wicked servant
(Luke 19:22).
This initial exposition by Abelard on how God can be both a single,
undivided nature and yet also be described as a trinity of persons gives
far more emphasis to the role of reason, and in particular to pagan phil-
osophical authority, than any of the recorded teachings of William of
Champeaux or Anselm of Laon. Abelards treatise presents itself as an
alternative to the De trinitate of Boethius, in attempting to formulate
orthodox doctrine against the errors of a more recent heretic, Roscelin of
Compie`gne. Abelard is not satised with St. Anselms arguments against
contemporary dialecticians in the De incarnatione Verbi because he does
not address the key question that Roscelin had raised about the impor-
tance of recognizing the necessary difference between God the Father and
God the Son. Abelards way of resolving the issue is to expand upon a
relatively familiar idea certainly mentioned by William of Champeaux
and developed by Hugh of St. Victorthat the Son is wisdom and the
Holy Spirit divine love or goodnessby arguing that they proceed from
the potentia, or potency, of the Father. In doing so, he questions the
traditional assertion of the Athanasian Creed that each of the three di-
vine persons is equally omnipotent. By emphasizing divine goodness to
the world and the capacity of all humanity, both male and female, to
grasp this insight, Abelard distances himself from the teaching of William
of Champeaux, for whom all human understanding had been distorted by
original sin, above all by concupiscence. Like Anselm of Laon, William
was convinced that the devil had a legitimate right (ius) over humanity
as a result of Adams sexual transgression. Only through Christ, born of
a virgin without the pollution of sex, did God assume manhood and thus
give a way for humanity to be redeemed. While Abelard had not begun
to write about the redemption, he had already distanced himself pro-
foundly from the assumptions of both Anselm of Laon and William of
Champeaux about the fallen status of humankind.
Abelard stands closer to an equally venerable theological tradition,
manifest in Boethius, that emphasizes the compatibility of pagan philo-
sophical tradition with Christian insight. Abelard is not fully comfortable
with some of the specic terms used by Boethius, such as the word res for
what is signied by a word, and prefers to go back to what he considers
a more truly Aristotelian perspective on categories as voces or verbal ut-
terances, when analyzing the doctrine of the Trinity. He sympathizes with
the desire of teachers such as Bernard and Thierry of Chartres to see the
connections between Platonist and Christian teaching, but emphasizes

that Platonic forms are themselves utterances, without a real existence
outside that which they inform, and thus should not be taken literally.
One student in particular was very interested in the wider range of
classical authors that Abelard began to discuss in his writing on the Trin-
ity. Both from her later letters and from the Epistolae duorum amantium,
it is evident that Heloise frequently draws on the ethical wisdom of au-
thors such as Macrobius, Cicero, and the Roman poets as fully consistent
with Christian wisdom. Abelard is unusual in stating so forcefully within
a treatise of theology the case that these authors glimpsed some aspect of
the supreme good. The letters of the young Heloise differ from those of
her lover in the way that they continually fuse scriptural imagery with
those of pagan writers about love and friendship. She continuously in-
vokes God as the witness to the purity and sincerity of her love, without
any sense that she is guilty of any sin, because her motives are pure. While
the young Abelard vacillates in those early letters between professions of
great passion and an occasional sense of guiltas in letter 59, when he
protests, I am guilty who have forced you to sinshe refuses to ac-
knowledge that she has sinned, and invokes God as a fount of forgiveness.
Abelards emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the benignity of God trans-
mits an image of God not as a judge who punishes sin but as supreme
goodness working through love. His comment about spiritus, or breath,
expressing disposition of the spirit (affectus animi), as when we sigh out
of love, uses a very worldly experience to explain a key affect or dispo-
sition of God, namely, his loving-kindness. He claims that in speaking of
the Holy Spirit as the gift of the Father and the Son, Augustine had
described more an effect of the Holy Spirit than an affect or attribute of
God. Given that Abelard writes so much about the loving-kindness of
God so soon after the collapse of his early relationship to Heloise, he may
be projecting his idealization of Heloise as ultimate goodness onto his
image of God. He composes a treatise that responds to her fascination
with combining pagan and Christian wisdom in a way that he had not
attempted before. The noticeable growth in his familiarity with the writ-
ings of Cicero may also have been facilitated by his discussions with He-
loise. While Abelard never refers to the De inventione in his Dialectica,
Ciceros authority is much more invoked in the Logica Ingredientibus. In
the Theologia Summi boni, Cicero is the rst philosophical authority to
be invoked as proof of pagan witness to understanding Gods nature.48 It
is impossible to be certain exactly how many of these insights he evolved
during his shared reading of classical texts with Heloise. There can be no
doubt, however, that after the collapse of his physical relationship with
the trinity 119
her, he became familiar with a far wider range of authors than studied
within his own specialist discipline of dialectic. He sought to continue a
project to which she was always attached.
There are structural weaknesses within the Theologia Summi boni.
Certain passages, notably the account of the generation of the Word from
the Father in the third book, were written very hastily, while other sec-
tions, such as about the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father
and Son, are underdeveloped. The discussion contains a number of in-
dividual ideas that seem more like chance thoughts than clearly developed
themes. Above all, the treatise concentrates only on the Trinity and
leaves untouched many broader topics normally discussed in classes on
theology, such as providence, predestination, and the incarnationthe
central doctrine of Christian faith, which he mentions only at the con-
clusion of the work. Some discussions seem to be written more for spe-
cialists in dialectic familiar with Abelards reading of Porphyry and Ar-
istotle than for students of theology. Nonetheless, Abelard made a major
step forward in his thinking with the Theologia Summi boni and in the
process developed some very original ideas. By attempting to connect
three traditions of intellectual discoursephilosophical theology as de-
bated by Anselm of Canterbury and Roscelin, patristic tradition as studied
by Anselm of Laon and his disciples, and commentary on the Platonist
authors studied at ChartresAbelard was endeavoring to create a new
synthesis that would go much further than anything attempted by William
of Champeaux.
Abelards treatise provoked a negative reaction from Roscelin of Com-
pie`gne, who wrote to the bishop of Paris, perhaps around 1120, asking
for an opportunity to demonstrate the heresies that he thought it con-
tained. In Roscelins eyes, Abelard was guilty of the Sabellian heresy of
conating the identity of the three persons and not sufciently respecting
that these were three distinct things or subjects. Abelard asked the bishop
to convene a public meeting at which he could defend himself against
such outrageous claims. Whether or not this meeting in Paris eventuated,
the treatise generated more serious criticism from a different quarter. In
March or April 1121, he was invited to attend a council being convened
at Soissons under the aegis of Cardinal Conon of Palestrina, papal legate
of both France and Germany. While not technically obliged to attend, as
he belonged to the archdiocese of Sens rather than of Reims, he may
have seen the assembly as an opportunity to refute his critics in public.49
Abelards account of the machinations of two leading disciples of An-
selm of Laon, Alberic of Reims and Lotulf of Novara, to secure his con-
demnation for heresy at Soissons is itself such a masterpiece of dramatic
narrative that the broader context of what was happening at that council
can easily be overlooked. It was one of a series of ecclesiastical assemblies
convened by Conon and presided over by the archbishop of Reims to
assert the independence of ecclesiastical authority from the secular arm
and to reform the clergy. Conon had turned down an invitation to be
pope, but promoted the election of Guido, archbishop of Vienne, as Pope
Calixtus II (11191124) after the short-lived and turbulent papacy of
Gelasius II (11181119).50 Conon and William of Champeaux played a
key role at the Council of Reims, presided over in October 1119 by Pope
Calixtus II, in excommunicating all those perceived to be enemies of the
Church, above all, the German emperor, Henry V, and in giving ofcial
support to the newly established orders of Cteaux and Premontre.51 Papal
approval of the Carta caritatis helped transform a edgling circle of re-
formed abbeys into a powerful new movement within the Church. The
accusations against Abelard mounted at Soissons constituted only a minor
issue at the council and were deferred to its nal day. Its major role was
to implement the reforming agenda of the Church: that no ecclesiastical
ofce should be dependent on lay authority and that no cleric of the rank
of subdeacon or above should be allowed to keep a wife or mistress.52 His
critics perceived Abelard as embodying the values of corrupt clergy, and
as connected by friendship to the most powerful of these worldly clerics,
Stephen of Garlande, who in 1120 succeeded his brother Anselm as sen-
eschal of France.
Many senior ecclesiastics, abbots, and teachers were present at the
Council of Soissons, including Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres, and Thierry
of Chartres. William of Champeaux, who signed a charter with Conon
at Chalons-sur-Marne in 1121, is very likely to have been present at the
assembly, giving support to Alberic and Lotulf. Also present was William
of St.-Thierry (ca. 10751145), newly appointed to the Abbey of St.-
Thierry in Reims and a friend of Bernard of Clairvaux, whose monks
William later describes as like the sons of the prophets, the followers of
Elisha.53 In On the Nature and Dignity of Love, composed perhaps between
1121 and 1124, William develops a theology based not on reason but on
the principle of amor, which he understands to be of divine origin. Per-
haps alluding directly to Abelard in this treatise, he questions whether
those who simply rely on their own reason to understand the invisible
things of God, without an understanding of love, can ever attain to true
theologia, or contemplation of God. In the process such persons also fail
in their understanding of things in this world (physica) and of ethical
behavior (ethica).54 William sees no need to identify by name his pagan
or Christian sources of inspiration, even though they were very broad.
the trinity 121
His core inspiration is Pauls text about the invisible things of God being
revealed in creation. William alludes to the phrase of the Roman play-
wright Terence about not considering anything human to be foreign to
the enlightened soul to explain that this is the product of amor naturalis,
natural love for someone without expectation of any reward.55 He is fas-
cinated by the interaction of body and soul in the human person, both
as it should be in Christ and as it is in fallen humanity. There is a con-
sistent polemical strain in Williams writing that emphasizes that the more
philosophers aim at the goal of wisdom, the more they misunderstand the
true greatness of God. Whether William of St.-Thierry spoke up against
Abelard at the Council of Soissons is not known. It is noteworthy, how-
ever, that the rst accusation that William made against Abelard in
1140that he attributed omnipotence to the Father alone and not to
the Son or the Holy Spiritechoes very closely the accusation that Ab-
elard reports was made at Soissons by a certain person. Questioning the
omnipotence of all three persons of the Trinity was tantamount to chal-
lenging the authority of the Church as a whole to dene orthodox doc-
trine.
Abelard singled out two disciples of Anselm of Laon, Alberic of Reims
and Lotulf of Novara, as particularly responsible for the campaign against
him. They saw themselves as the true successors to Anselm of Laon but
were disturbed that students were now beginning to be attracted by the
schools of Paris.56 They apparently spread rumors that Abelard was
preaching that there were three gods, the very same charge that had been
made thirty years earlier against Roscelin of Compie`gne (who accused
Abelard of the opposite heresy, of confusing the three divine persons with
each other). Once he arrived in the city, Abelard started to lecture in
public to both a lay and clerical audience, provoking further hostility from
Alberic, who accused Abelard of denying God could beget God. Abelard
recalls in the Historia calamitatum how he pointed to a passage in Augus-
tines De trinitate that supported his position entirely. Geoffrey, bishop of
Chartres, spoke on Abelards behalf and suggested that the case be ex-
amined in more detail after Abelard had returned to his own abbey at
St.-Denis. Worried that they would lose their inuence if the case went
out of their diocese, Alberic and Lotulf urged the papal legate to have
Abelard condemned and imprisoned in a monastery.
In the one other extant report of the Council of Soissons, Otto of
Freising claims that the charge against Abelard was the quite different
Sabellian heresy of equating the person of the Father with the Son. Ottos
account, however, may have been inuenced by his sympathy for the
theological perspective of Roscelin of Compie`gne, whose denition of
the three divine persons as three distinct things is claimed by Otto to be

the orthodox teaching of the Church.57 Because Abelard never responds
to this particular accusation when revising the Theologia Christiana, but
does take care to justify why he attributes potency to the Father alone,
it seems likely that Abelards report is the more accurate.
The result was that Abelard was forced to burn his own treatise, to
recite the Athanasian Creed with its familiar lines of all three persons of
the Trinity being omnipotent, and to be held in connement at the Ab-
bey of St.-Medard in Soissons. The prior of that abbey was Goswin, who
had challenged Abelard a decade earlier at the school of Mont Ste.-
Genevie`ve. Goswin subsequently recalled a conversation at St.-Medard
that highlights Abelards criticism of contemporary discussion of ethics.
Goswins preaching apparently provoked Abelard to complain, Why do
you preach, urge, and praise honesty so much? There are many who argue
so much about the types of honesty but who do not know what honesty
is. Goswin recalled how he forced Abelard into submission with a telling
line: You have not experienced what being aware of honesty really is.58
The exchange neatly encapsulates Abelards frustration at the time with
monastic theorizing about ethics, as well as Goswins pleasure in refuting
someone always committed to argument.
This connement at St.-Medard did not last more than a few days.
Abelard claims that hostility toward Conon was so great that the papal
legate subsequently repented of his action and agreed to allow Abelard
to return to St.-Denis, presumably still under restriction not to teach. In
this situation, he applied himself to working in the rich library, collecting
texts that would make up the Sic et non. Abelard was aware that if he
was going to answer the criticisms raised at Soissons, he would need
stronger arguments than he had raised in that initial version of his treatise
on the Trinity. They needed to be based not just on reason but also on
authority.
7
A Christian Theologia
T he years following Abelards condemnation at Soissons in 1121 wit-

nessed a new phase in the evolution of his career and thought marked
by a deepening critique of ecclesiastical authority coupled with an inten-
sied devotion to the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. Abelards failure to per-
suade the assembled ecclesiastics of his arguments drove him to defend
his arguments with a much deeper knowledge of the Church Fathers. In
familiarizing himself with their writings, he formulated more clearly his
own attitude toward a wide range of questions that demanded his atten-
tion, not just about God and redemption but about the Church and the
foundations of the ethical life. While his major commitment during these
years was still to completing a body of philosophical writing about lan-
guage and understanding, he was anxious to improve what he had to say
about the nature and attributes of God. He also laid the scholarly foun-
dation for a synthesis of theological ideas that he would develop more
fully in the 1130s. In the process of distancing himself from the authority
of Latin patristic tradition, he shifted from Latin to Greek terminology,
from divinitas to theologia, and focused more intensely on the consoling
power of the Holy Spirit.
123
The Debate about the Identity of

Denis the Areopagite
Not long after Abelard was sent back to St.-Denis, an argument with
other monks developed over suspicions that he was questioning the iden-
tity of their patron saint, whom they claimed was Denis the Areopagite,
the pagan philosopher at Athens converted by the preaching of Paul,
according to the Acts of the Apostles (17:34). Certain monks took ex-
ception to his discovering that a statement by Bede, that Denis had been
bishop of Corinth, contradicted the claim of Hilduin that their patron
saint had been bishop of Athens before becoming bishop of Paris. They
apparently reported to the abbot that Abelard was claiming that Bedes
authority was greater than that of Hilduin, thereby impugning not only
the identity of their patron saint but the very dignity of the kingdom.
The argument was not about the authorship of the writings attributed to
Denis the Areopagite but about the authority of their own traditions.
Abelard provides more detail about this debate in a learned letter to
Abbot Adam, which gives patristic authority for the claims made by Hil-
duin.1 Avoiding all reference to Hilduins highly imaginative biography of
Denis, Abelard turns instead to Eusebius of Caesarea and to Jerome, two
authorities whom he believed had greater authority than Bede and who
both asserted that Denis was bishop of Athens. Bede must have been
mistaken, unless there were two different bishops of Corinth. What mat-
ters is that arguments have to be based on authoritative testimony, not
on imaginative reconstructions. Abelard subsequently composed two
hymns in honor of Denis, whom he describes as the greatest of the
philosophers, apostle of Gaul, and a martyr for his faith.2 In the Theologia
Christiana, he explains that Denis told Paul about the unknown god at
Athens, a city famous for its intellectual life, reporting that there were
no physical sacrices at this altar apart from tears and prayers, the sac-
rice of the Brahmins.3 Abelard never quotes directly from the writings
attributed to Denis the Areopagite, translated and commented upon by
Scotus Eriugena in the ninth century but not widely known until Hugh
of St.-Victor wrote his own commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy, per-
haps in the 1130s. They were also quoted by Thierry of Chartres (who
also drew on texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus).4 Abelard was more
interested in the idea that Denis, a pagan philosopher, had taught Paul
about the unknown God than in the writings (in fact from the sixth
century) attributed to him.
a christian theologia 125
The Sic et non
Abelards letter to Abbot Adam neatly illustrates the principles that he

formulates in his prologue to the Sic et non, a collection of texts, mostly
from Scripture and the Fathers, that he started to compile probably while
at St.-Denis, after the burning of his treatise at Soissons. The principle
of nding harmony behind conicting testimony was not in itself original.
In the late eleventh century, Ivo of Chartres had created anthologies of
sometimes discordant patristic texts to help clerics and lawyers formulate
decisions that were in accord with the oldest and most authoritative
traditions of the Church. Anselm of Laon was aware that contradictory
texts could be used to promote argument, but had insisted that the true
scholar should penetrate beyond verbal quibbling: Discussing correct
meanings belongs to men, while arguing about words is an affair of boys,
who only understand a fraction of what they say or hear. . . . The sen-
tences of all catholics may be different, but they are not contradictory, as
they come together into one harmony; in words, however, some things
may sound like opposites and conicts through which the weak may be
scandalized, the nimble are stretched, the arrogant argue, the experi-
encedwho quickly show to the weak that things which seem to disagree
actually harmonizeare excluded.5 While Abelard agrees with these
principles, he goes further in arguing that ancient authorities not only
differed among themselves but sometimes were mistaken in their judg-
ments. Anselm of Laon is never as explicitly critical of tradition. Within
his Dialectica, and even more in his Ingredientibus commentaries on Por-
phyry and Aristotle, Abelard had argued that Boethius had often followed
the opinion of others and that therefore his interpretations should not
be followed blindly.
Abelard was disturbed not just by the personal animosity of other
monks at St.-Denis but by the worldliness of their way of life. Having
been so impressed by the ethical sincerity of Heloise, he considered them
to be hypocrites in their interpretation of the Rule of Benedict. With the
help of certain brothers and various students, he decided to escape from
the abbey and take refuge with friends at St.-Ayoul, in Provins, home of
Count Theobald of Champagne. In the eleventh century, St.-Ayoul, a
dependency of Montier-la-Celle in Troyes, had accepted the same rela-
tively austere monastic reforms as Molesme. In 1098, Robert of Molesme,
a former prior of St.-Ayoul, broke away from his abbey to establish an
even stricter monastic community at Cteaux.
The prior of St.-Ayoul helped Abelard obtain a sympathetic hearing
from Count Theobald, himself a supporter of the cause of monastic reform
within the territory in his control. After the death of Adam (January 19,
1122) and the accession (March 12, 1122) of Suger as the new abbot of
St.-Denis, Abelard was ofcially released from obedience to the new abbot
on the proviso that he not attach himself to any other abbey. Stephen of
Garlande, dean of Ste.-Genevie`ve and principal counselor to the king,
helped negotiate this arrangement, provoking an estrangement with the
abbot of St.-Denis that would never be resolved. With the support of
Hato, the newly appointed bishop of Troyes (and former dean of the
cathedral of Sens, where Abelard had held a canonry), Abelard was al-
lowed to construct a small chapel or oratory on land that he had been
given by unnamed benefactors. He recalls that he was soon joined by a
number of students, who left towns and castles to devote themselves to
the pursuit of wisdom on the model of the sons of the prophets (2 Kings
2:17), whom Jerome had described as the original monks. William of
St.-Thierry used this image to describe the primitive idealism of the early
years of Clairvaux, founded only in 1115. The community that gathered
around Abelard on the banks of the Ardusson, not far from Provins, was
much less successful. It lasted some ve years, until internal problems and
external political pressure forced him to abandon the experiment in 1127.
While Abelard originally dedicated the chapel that he and his disciples
constructed to the Holy Trinity, he subsequently rededicated it specically
to the Paraclete, the Comforter or Holy Spirit. This was a controversial
move, which he defends at some length in the Historia calamitatum. In
the early twelfth century, the most popular dedication of newly built
churches was to the Virgin Mary, to whom all monasteries following the
Cistercian ordo were automatically consecrated. By devoting his oratory
to the Paraclete in particular, the divine goodness that had settled on the
Virgin and thus had generated Jesus as the Son of God, Abelard empha-
sizes that aspect of divinity which had inspired and sustained not just the
Virgin but creation itself. Rededicating the oratory to the Paraclete sig-
naled a distinct deepening in his theological perspective during the years
immediately after the Council of Soissons. Instead of thinking about God
simply as a Trinity of persons, Abelard was articulating his own intensely
personal devotion to God as the supreme goodness that gives consolation
to all humanity. The energy he once invested on Heloise, he now devoted
to the Holy Spirit.
The controversy that Abelard encountered at Soissons forced him to
argue much more from the authority of written texts. No longer content
with quoting Augustine, Abelard broadened his reading to a far wider
range of patristic authors. While anthologies such as Ivos Decretum and
the Sententie Magistri A. acknowledged differences of interpretation in
ecclesiastical tradition, they never claimed that a Church Father or scrip-

tural writer might be mistaken on any point. Abelard argued that all their
writing needed to be scrutinized in the light of reason. The practice of
examining and comparing apparently contradictory texts had already been
practiced in the school of Anselm of Laon. In the Sic et non, Abelard
provides a theoretical basis for this process. He draws on the combined
authority of Priscian, Cicero, and Augustine to explain how writers often
vary their discourse for the sake of engaging a wide audience. Whereas
he had previously focused on dialectical argument, he now appreciates
the rhetorical foundation of theological testimony. A favorite quotation
from Ciceros De inventione (1.41.76), In everything, sameness is the
mother of excess, helps explain how variety often makes discourse more
attractive. Having already argued that words and statements do not au-
tomatically signify some objective reality or thing out there in the world,
he applies this principle to Scripture and the writings of the Church
Fathers. Abelard transfers traditional advice, such as Jeromes warning
about unreliable apocryphal texts, to scriptural passages that might be
erroneous if taken literally. Augustines acknowledgment in his Retracta-
tiones that he had said a number of things in error shows how a recognized
authority might admit that he could be wrong. As an example of phrases
in Scripture that cannot be literally true, or were said more according to
the opinion of men than according to the truth of things, Abelard quotes
Marys comment to the young Jesus, Your father and I have been worried
looking for you (Luke 2:48) and Melchizedek had no father or mother,
or ancestry (Heb. 7:3).
Just as Abelard had theorized within his dialectic that what was pro-
claimed by a statement was not a thing, so he claims that statements
made by Scripture or the Fathers do not signify objective realities. He
recalls that Gregory the Great had recognized that prophets and saints
were not always infallible, as when Peter was refuted by Paul. It was not
mendacity, however, if saints made claims at variance with truth. As Au-
gustine had argued, the true concern of all the Scriptures relates to the
love of God and the love of neighbor. All else is superuous.6 Abelard
quotes the phrase of Augustine, Have charity, and do whatever you
wish, as cited by Ivo of Chartres, to argue that caritas is ultimately more
important than any single version of the truth that anyone might put
forward.7 Acutely aware that theological disagreement frequently provokes
bitterness and hatred, he argues that one must never assume that a single
denition of truth has nal authority. He may be drawing here on Ros-
celin, who had argued in a riposte to Abelard written around 1120 that
the saints and Fathers of the Church had themselves sometimes been
mistaken. Abelard suggests that the Fathers of Church or the authors of

Scripture might be wrong, although they never set out to deceive. He
advises his reader to follow Jeromes counsel to Laeta about educating her
daughter, that she take care with what she reads. Test everything, keep
what is good (1 Thess. 5:21). At the very end of this prologue, Abelard
comes up with a pithy denition that subtly articulates his sense of the
importance of dialectic: [T]he rst key of wisdom is dened as regular
and frequent questioning. To buttress this claim, he quotes not Augustine
but Aristotle, that philosopher, most perspicacious of all people, from
his Categories: Perhaps it is difcult to assert condently about these
things, unless they have often been considered. Doubting about individual
things is not useless. Reading makes one a judge rather than a disciple.
By dubitare Abelard means doubting in the sense of being uncertain
rather than skeptical about truth.8 While Augustine had spoken about
questioning as part of the process of understanding, he invariably associ-
ates the condence of belief with the absence of doubt or uncertainty.
Abelard draws on another scriptural passage, Seek and you shall nd,
knock and it will be opened to you (Matt. 7:7), to formulate his own
principle: It is by doubting that we come to inquiry, by inquiry we per-
ceive truth. In his Dialectica, Abelard had presented questioning as es-
sential to dialectical inquiry in distinguishing truth from falsehood. One
who asks, expresses his own doubt, so that the certitude that he does not
yet have may follow.9 Within the prologue to the Sic et non, he is more
aware that truth is beyond easy denition and that all statements should
be scrutinized and questioned rather than simply accepted without think-
ing. He gives philosophical depth to Ivos injunctions about caritas as the
basis of critical enquiry.
In the Sic et non, Abelard raises a far wider range of questions than
presented in the Sententie Magistri A., an anthology of patristic texts re-
lating to more basic questions about God, Christ, the sacraments, and the
structure of the Church that may have been used by Anselm of Laon.
Abelards anthology is notable from the outset for pointing out the di-
versity of patristic opinion about a broader scope of issues, in particular
relating to the divine nature. The earliest version contains eighteen ques-
tions, mostly about faith in God, and provides further support for argu-
ments raised in the Theologia Summi boni. Only its last question, about
whether God and man are parts in Christ, relates to material not covered
in that treatise.10 The texts that he chooses are not necessarily contra-
dictory, but often justify why he departs from a traditional argument. For
example, all the texts quoted under question 9 about whether or not God
is a substance afrm that God is beyond substance, a position that causes
a reader to reassess the traditional denition, with which he concludes,

that God is one substance but multiple in persons. Very occasionally,
Abelard includes a favorite philosophical text, such as a passage from
Boethiuss De differentiis topicis, to explain what he means by substance.11
Exactly when Abelard started to enlarge the Sic et non is not certain.
Because many of the same series of quotations also occur within the Theo-
logia Christiana, he probably worked on both compositions at about the
same time, quite possibly over a number of years. Most patristic anthol-
ogies from the period tend to be organized according to a standard frame-
work, beginning with God and the creation of both angels and humanity,
and dealing in turn with original sin and the Old Testament, the coming
of Christ to free humanity from sin, the sacraments of the Church, and
pastoral issues of right and wrong behavior, culminating with the last
judgment and life to come. This follows the internal organization of the
Nicene Creed, the most widely known summary of Christian belief. By
the late 1120s, Abelard had almost certainly already expanded the initial
recension of the Sic et non into a much larger anthology, organized very
broadly into three main sections: faith in God and in Christ, the sacra-
ments, and charity as the foundation of ethical behavior. The privileged
position he accords to caritas in the third part of the Sic et non is signif-
icant, as it may suggest that he was already using the concept to provide
a basis for his ethical teaching, in the same way as recorded within his
sententie, taken down by students in the 1130s. In the initial expanded
version of the Sic et non, preserved in two manuscripts alongside the
Theologia Christiana, Abelard organizes quotations from the Fathers and
from Scripture (with a very small handful of treasured pagan texts) into
about ninety questions.12 While he may have been thinking about all
these questions during his time at the Paraclete, we have no rm record
of his resolution of these issues prior to students recording his sententie in
the 1130s. After many questions relating to the nature and attributes of
God, there are questions about the status of Christ, in particular whether
he is created or coeternal with God. Simply raising a question such as
whether the humanity of Christ grew in wisdom or not emphasizes the
humanity of Jesus (as in Luke 2:52) against traditional theological claims
about the fullness of Christs wisdom. The Sic et non effectively signals
the theological direction that Abelard wants his students to consider.
Many of the opinions that he supplies about baptism and Eucharist, in
particular about whether one can be saved without the water of baptism
(SN 106) and whether the Eucharist is essentially the true esh and blood
of Christ (SN 117), are culled directly from the Decretum of Ivo of Char-
tres. His selection of specic texts, such as about baptism (SN 106), gives
some clue as to the opinions he is inclined to favor. Many of the quo-

tations about baptism emphasize that water is not in itself necessary for
salvation, evident in the case of the good thief, whom Christ acknowl-
edged would be with him in paradise. Very often Abelard challenges fa-
miliar patristic texts quoted by Ivo by raising others that present an al-
ternative perspective. By applying titles to individual sections such as
That the sins of the Fathers are passed onto their sons or not, That it
is legitimate to have a concubine or not, That human intercourse can
be without sin or not, he implicitly raises issues on which Ivo of Chartres
and Anselm of Laon had delivered answers that they had thought den-
itive. Abelard effectively points out that the standard judgments on many
issues need to be subject to reasoned questioning.
Abelard draws extensively on Ivo for many passages about virginity
and marriage. To a single text provided by Ivo about whether sexual
intercourse can ever be without sin (SN 130), he adds many passages
from Augustines De bono coniugali which imply that intercourse is not
sinful in itself.13 The third section of the Sic et non begins with a quite
original series of questions about caritas, none of which had been raised
by Ivo. One (SN 135), about whether or not marriage is good, contrasts
Jeromes negative view with the more positive emphasis of Augustine,
anticipating Abelards response to the last of Heloises Problemata.
After the texts relating to the sacraments and sexual morality, Abelard
introduces three questions (SN 13638), not found at all in Ivo of Char-
tres, about whether the love of neighbor is enjoined on all men, whether
charity alone is said to be a virtue, and whether charity once acquired is
ever lost. These passages effectively announce a central thread of his eth-
ical teaching, based on the ideals of dilectio and caritas. Passages of Au-
gustine about the primacy of love provide a key source of inspiration, in
particular Augustines critique of the Stoic doctrine that all virtues and
vices are effectively equal. Many of the opinions that he quotes in this
part of the Sic et non he discusses more fully in the Collationes.14 SN 136,
about whether love (dilectio) of neighbor embraces all people, picks up
precisely the observation raised by Heloise in her early discussion of love
with Abelard, namely, that although we are enjoined to love everyone,
in practice we love with special concern those who are particularly tied
to us. Abelard quotes from the De doctrina Christiana to urge that we
should do so not for any personal gain but for an eternal reward. Abelard
is particularly interested in Augustines comments about different types of
love, as well as in evaluating the implication that of Pauls statement that
of the three virtuesfaith, hope, and charityonly charity will endure.
In a departure from his normal practice, Abelard quotes a passage from
Ciceros De ofciis about prudence as useless without justice alongside an

even longer passage from Augustine challenging the Stoic view that all
vices and all virtues are of equal merit. In SN 138, he introduces a series
of texts in which Augustine denes the relationship of amor, dilectio, and
caritas, followed by two passages from Cicero about friendship. One is
from the De inventione, also repeated in the Collationes, dening friendship
as positive will toward another for the sake of that persons good, recip-
rocated in equal measure.15 The other, from the De amicitia, is precisely
the same passage that the young Abelard employed in the Epistolae duorum
amantium to answer Heloises question about the nature of love, although
here quoted more accurately. Cicero declares that close friendship is of
such power that it is something compressed into such a restricted space
that true caritas is to be found in either two people alone or among just
a very few people. Cicero uses caritas in a more intimate sense than in
Christian usage. This is clearly a passage of great importance to Abelard.
Many of the patristic texts about love that follow this passage all reinforce
the theme that charity is the foundation of virtue and once acquired can
never be lost.
In his early response to Heloise, Abelard had drawn on Ciceros de-
nition, that true love was based on a union of wills, to dene amor. In
doing so, he had slightly modied Ciceros language in order to explain
that two identical wills were the same through being not different rather
than of the same essence. Quoting Cicero more accurately in the Sic et
non, he now situates this love more within the context of Christian caritas.
He still thinks, however, that this perfect love can be experienced in this
world and is not just an otherworldly ideal. Exactly when Abelard in-
cluded these passages about love within his longer version of the Sic et
non is unknown. While he had been thinking about caritas as the foun-
dation of all ethics in the Sic et non, he did not begin to raise his own
ideas on the topic until the Collationes, perhaps from the late 1120s or
early 1130s. An anthology that might seem to be simply a summary of
quotations from Scripture and the Fathers in fact provides valuable insight
into the gestation of his thinking about true ethics, questions rst put to
him by Heloise.
The Theologia Christiana
Preparing the Sic et non helped Abelard give new depth to his treatise
about the nature of God as a Trinity of persons. Instead of calling it a De
trinitate, imitating Augustine and Boethius, Abelard named it his Theologia
Christiana. Abelard understands the term theologia in the Boethian sense,

as discourse about the divine nature, as distinct from teaching about
Christ or sacraments. By specifying that he is expounding a Christian
theologia, Abelard claries that he is appropriating a pagan discipline,
namely, theologia, to Christian ends. He also replaces the word divini with
theologi in order to t in with his sense that Greek traditions of thought
were ultimately more authentic than those of the Latins.16
In the Theologia Christiana, Abelard gives attention to a wide range of
authors, initiating a style of quotation of patristic texts very different from
the unencumbered, more rhetorical style employed by Hugh of St.-Victor.
One of these less well-known authors who comes to occupy a crucial role
for Abelard is Maximus of Turin.17 Abelard is particularly interested in
Maximuss statement that God the Father is omnipotent. Whereas Hugh
of St.-Victor had not caused a ripple by claiming that God is powerful,
wise, and good, Abelards attribution of power to the Father alone was
more controversial, because it counters the claim in the Athanasian Creed
that all three persons are omnipotent. The passage attributed to Maximus
seems to support the claim that the Father is powerful in the sense that
he does not depend on the Son or Holy Spirit to exist. Abelard counters
accusations of unorthodoxy by nding patristic texts that t his argument.
In a subsequent revision of the Theologia Christiana, he corrects an earlier
misattribution of a passage to Augustine, reassigning it to Gennadius of
Marseille.18
Abelard gives most attention, however, to supporting his claim that
Holy Spirit names divine goodness or benignity. He sees the key divine
attribute not as power but as benevolent love, whether described as amor,
caritas, or benignity. In an unusual reading of the phrase I came to bring
re on earth (Luke 12:49), Abelard interprets this re as caritas. Doves,
he suggests, are particularly appropriate as an image of divine love because
they are of a warmer nature and are often found as couples, representing
both love of God and love of neighbor.19 He is aware that Augustine in
his De trinitate had understood the Holy Spirit as the perfect love of the
Father and Son, but he interprets this love more as Gods goodness to the
world.20
In seeking out philosophical as well as scriptural and patristic texts
that support his argument, Abelard departs signicantly from Augustine,
who connes himself rigorously to scriptural and occasional patristic au-
thority. To deect potential criticism of his method, he nds passages of
Augustine that demonstrate his interest in secular philosophy. He also
comments in great detail on those passages of Platos Timaeus that describe
the world soul as giving life to the world. In the previous version of his
treatise on the Trinity, he had explained why the world soul could not
be identied literally with the Holy Spirit but was rather an image or
covering (involucrum) through which an aspect of the divine nature was
revealed. He now explains more carefully that Platos image of the world
soul refers to the effect of the Holy Spirit, which itself is the affect or
attribute of divine goodness. The image of the world soul shows how all
things live in the goodness of God and that there is nothing evil or
corrupt, as everything is ordered through divine goodness.21 Platos phrases
about the world soul being made out of what is both undivided and di-
vided illuminate the way that the Spirit is both single and multiform,
working through creation.
Abelard also quotes from the De musica of Boethius to show how the
universe is permeated by a sublime order, shaped by number, and how
music can calm troubled and inebriated young men.22 Another illustration
of the Holy Spirit as manifest in music are the cases of David using music
to make an evil spirit depart from Saul (1 Sam. 16:23) and to compose
psalms and gather together musical instruments in order to bind the com-
munity together (1 Chron. 15:16). Whereas Augustine had feared the
potentially seductive effect of music, Abelard emphasizes its capacity to
remind people of the fundamental goodness of the divine nature and the
cosmic order. Whether or not he had already composed his biblical la-
ments, he was already keenly aware, even in the 1120s, of how music can
articulate the healing power of the Holy Spirit.
The rst book of the Theologia Christiana concludes with Abelard ex-
panding on an idea he had mentioned in the earlier treatise, namely, that
King Nebuchadnezzar had glimpsed a gure like the Son of God in a
dream. This becomes a grander notion that Nebuchadnezzar and Dindi-
mus, mythical king of the Brahmins (the Indians), constitute with David
and Solomon four wheels of the chariot of the great king. Abelards
information about the piety and asceticism of Dindimus and the Brahmins
comes from an apocryphal letter to Alexander the Great as well as from
certain comments made by Jerome, quoted in such a way as to pass over
Jeromes other remarks about their remoteness from Christ.23 While stories
about Brahmin piety would become popular within vernacular literature
in subsequent centuries, Abelards summary is one of the earliest known
efforts within theological literature to place wisdom from India on an
equal footing with that from Jewish tradition.24
In a new second book of the Theologia Christiana, Abelard emphasizes
much more than before that not only did the ancient philosophers of
every culture grasp aspects of the divine nature through their reection
on the harmony of the created universe but they provide a better example
of ascetic virtue than many monks of his own day. This leads him to
expand on the ethical aspect of pagan teaching, an issue barely touched
on in the Theologia Summi boni. Abelard argues that Pauls comment
about the Invisibilia Dei being revealed to the pagans supports the notion
that righteousness (justitia) has its origin in natural law, not in any written
law.25 This differs greatly from the emphasis of sentences attributed to
William of Champeaux about the reality of original sin and humanitys
need for the redeeming grace of Christ, the embodiment of righteous-
ness.26
Abelard deliberately avoids any reference to original sin, concentrating
instead on how carefully the philosophers discuss virtue and vice in their
writings. He recalls that Ovid had just as acute a sense of the weakness
of human nature as Augustine, when he quipped in the Amores, We
strive for what is forbidden, and always desire what is denied.27 This kind
of insight, implicitly taken for granted by Heloise in her early love letters,
is used as evidence that the ancient philosophers were distinguished in
both their lives and their teaching. To those who might claim that they
were driven more by the love of virtue (amore virtutis) than by the love
of God (amore Dei), he retorts that both are driven by love of the supreme
good, and quotes extensively from Augustine to prove his point.28 The
moral precepts of the gospel do nothing more, he argues, than urge a
reform of natural law, itself followed by the philosophers.29 Abelard imag-
ines the ancient philosophers as exhorting citizens to various ways of life,
whether married or ascetic, and urges communities to be bound together
by fraternal charity according to the rule of equity: Love your neighbor
as yourself.30 Examples of ancient virtue should make abbots responsible
for guiding monastic life blush and come to their senses when in the
sight of their brethren, eating simple fare, they devour food from exquisite
vessels. The allusion to Sugers love of opulence is hard to miss. In his
Apologia, addressed to William of St.-Thierry at about the same time,
Bernard of Clairvaux is even more eloquent in his mockery of monastic
luxury, but urges strict delity to the Rule of Benedict rather than imi-
tation of the ancient philosophers as the best way to renew the monastic
life.31
Abelards preferred authorities on ethics were the ancient philosophers,
whose teaching he summarizes in the Theologia Christiana, gleaning in-
formation from Macrobiuss Dream of Scipio and Platos Timaeus, as well
as from reports by Augustine and Jerome. He documents examples of what
he considers to be three great themes expounded by the ancient philos-
ophers: renunciation, magnanimity, and continence. Many of his argu-
ments about continence and the dangers of marriage are quite traditional,
even if expressed with unusual vigor. Given Abelards past experience,

one wonders if he is not alluding to his own past when he suggests that
Samson, David, and Solomon had all been brought low by women. His
account of how Solomon took seven hundred wives and three hundred
concubines (1 Kings 11:3) is particularly vivid: Solomon, the greatest of
the wise, whom lust brought low to such idolatry that it was as if in that
idoland what is most foul, I shall report foullythe cunt of a gentile
woman was more revered through lust than the idol through ignorance,
the effect being all the worse, as it was inexcusable in his own con-
science.32 The word cunnum is unknown in patristic theological litera-
ture, although it is not uncommon in Horace and Martial. Abelard also
draws extensively from Theophrastus, as quoted in Jeromes Contra Iovi-
nianum, to prove that the ancient philosophers saw marriage as beset by
dangers and inconveniences, in a number of passages that he attributes
to Heloise in the Historia calamitatum, in her speech warning against mar-
riage. While Abelard certainly used this passage of the Theologia Christiana
to nd arguments justifying the ascetic state, we cannot be certain
whether Heloise actually used this text when arguing against marriage.
She subsequently criticized Abelard not for attributing these arguments
to her but for passing over her other arguments about love being more
important than marriage. The passages in the Theologia Christiana about
the distractions of sex and marriage represent Abelards own desire to
shake off the reputation of his sexual misbehavior. Perhaps inspired by
admiration for Heloises learning, he presents the example of learned and
philosophical women such as the Sybils, the daughters of Diodorus So-
craticus, the Milesian virgins, and other learned women mentioned by
Jerome.33
The vigor with which Abelard quotes philosophical testimony about
the dangers of incontinence and the threat of worldliness creeping into
sacred places testies to his strong desire in the 1120s to distance himself
from his earlier reputation as a womanizer. He concludes his polemic
against worldliness with a polemical rebuke against corruption in the
Church. Like Bernard of Clairvaux, Abelard excoriates such extravagance
and profanation of the Church of God, where under the cover of religion
and prayer, the rites of Venus are performed.34 (Whether this refers to
sexual abandon or simply to liturgical extravagance is not clear.)
The third and fourth books of the Theologia Christiana enlarge the
rhetorical and technical aspects of the second and third books of the
Theologia Summi boni with further detail. His polemic against unnamed
dialecticians who abuse dialectic through their garrulity and obstinacy
certainly an allusion to Roscelinis even more extreme. Countering
their puerile opinions with sound reasoning, he holds that these pseudo-
intellectuals are too full of their own learning to understand that Gods
nature is beyond denition.35 Genuine inquiry leads to awareness that the
divine mystery cannot be dened with reasoning. At the same time, Ab-
elard also counters the arguments of those who claim that faith cannot
be based on any reasoning. To counter their false reasoning, he needs to
present arguments of his own.36
The modications and additions that Abelard makes to this part of his
treatise show that he is still interested in analyzing statements about God,
even while also beginning to develop his thinking about ethical issues.
Against Roscelin he argues that God is single in his nature (not that
Roscelin rejected this point). He now draws on the De trinitate of Boethius
to argue that God is beyond substance, a theme already hinted at in the
Sic et non. Abelard also reinforces his earlier discussion of possible modes
of identity and difference, in order to strengthen his argument that con-
ventional modes of difference do not apply to the divine nature. He also
makes some additional comments, such as about the impossibility of say-
ing that God could beget God, clearly directed against Alberic of Reims,
who had argued this point at Soissons in 1121.37 Abelard resists Alberics
arguments that Christ, as the Son of God, is effectively God from God
(as implied by the Nicene Creed).
Some technical modications that Abelard makes show that he is
transferring subtle improvements in his presentation of dialectic to the-
ology. For example, in a passage in which he quotes from Aristotles Per-
iermeneias, Abelard replaces voces with sermones when explaining that
words do not have the same meaning everywhere for everybody. The same
shift in terminology occurs in his revision of his gloss on Porphyrys Isa-
goge, in which he denes a universal not as a vox but as a sermo, or talk
signifying some understanding of a subject.38 His underlying message is
the same: that signication is not a product of any physical sound but is
a consequence of putting together these physical sounds in the mind of
the person who is speaking. The new terminology denes the contrast
between his own understanding of language as having to do with whole
phrases, and that of Roscelin, whom he accuses of simply being concerned
with twisting words.
Abelard also distances himself from any attempt to consider divine
attributes as entities separate from God. He rebukes several teachers,
counted in our times as true catholics for their thoroughness in the
teaching of the Scriptures, for holding such a position.39 Later in the
treatise, he claims that this is the view held by Ulger, bishop of Angers,
who apparently argued this on the basis of Priscians denition that a
noun signies substance and quality.40 Abelard objects to what he con-

siders an inappropriate attempt to apply a grammatical distinction to lan-
guage about God. He may also be distancing himself from the attempt of
Gilbert of Poitiers (ca. 10751154), who taught in Chartres throughout
the 1120s, to distinguish between that which is (id quod) and that by
which something is (id quo). Abelard is uncomfortable with the assump-
tion that an abstract form has an existence separate from that which it
predicates, holding it to be against the spirit of Aristotle.
The additional arguments that Abelard includes in the fourth book
conrm his continuing interest in questions of discourse during these
years. He analyzes patristic texts to demonstrate that statements about the
identity or difference between one divine person and another should
never be construed as assertions about distinct things. To philosophically
minded critics, who did not accept his rejection of the assumption that
a word signies its res, this seemed to imply the heresy of Sabellius (as it
did to Otto of Freising and Gilbert of Poitiers) that the divine persons
were effectively identical. From another point of view, however, Abelards
comparison of the relationship between Father and Son as like that be-
tween genus and species might imply that Christ is less than fully divine.
He completely rewrites the most controversial section of the Theologia
Summi boni, the discussion of the relationship between the Word of
God and God the Father, to explain more clearly the reasoning and lim-
itations behind what he insists is no more than an analogy about an
ultimately indenable divine nature. He introduces this section with
apocalyptic warnings about the imminent danger presented by contem-
porary heresies (more alarmist than that of St. Anselm when arguing
against Roscelin) and the need to answer their threat.41 In using such
emotive language, not found at all in the writing of Hugh of St.-Victor,
Abelard ignored the risk that he was provoking his critics to turn such
rhetoric against himself. Unlike Hugh, Abelard wrote for a small group
of disciples who agreed with his criticisms, rather than for the wider cler-
ical community.
Abelards caricatures of contemporary heretics reveal that by the mid-
1120s the discipline of theology was becoming an increasingly crowded
eld with a multiplicity of distinguished voices, many of whom had been
inuenced by William of Champeaux. One was Ulger, bishop of Angers
(11261148). Another was Alberic of Reims, who unsuccessfully sought
help from Bernard of Clairvaux in 1126 in trying to obtain the bishopric
of Chalons-sur-Marne.42 Abelard also reports that he knows someone of
no small reputation who holds that God could be deceived, since a thing
could turn out differently from how God planned it (a criticism of the
notion that a modal statement refers to a thing). Joscelin of Vierzy, who

once taught in Paris but then moved to Soissons, where he became its
bishop in 1126 and rose to become an inuential adviser to the king,
held such views. Abelard also refers to two brothers who count them-
selves among the greatest teachers, one of whom supposedly attributes
such weight to the efcacy of the words of consecration that they could
be recited by anyone, even a woman; the other apparently so immersed
in philosophical teachings that he believes that God cannot exist prior
to creation. These are perhaps references to Bernard and Thierry of Char-
tres.43 Abelards invective reveals how much of an outsider he felt to the
intellectual establishment within France. He even criticizes St. Anselm
for using an Augustinian analogy of the Trinity as like a spring, a river,
and a pond to point out its limitations, as it could be seen as implying
that the divine persons all share a single substance, namely, water.
The most delicate issue that Abelard has to consider is exactly how
the eternal Son of God relates to God the Father without being accused
of diminishing his divine status. He rephrases his controversial analogy
that the Son is related to the Father in the same way that divine wisdom
(the power of discernment) relates to divine potency, or a particular wax
image relates to wax itself. Neither of these elements in a relationship
can exist without the other. Inevitably, Abelards comparison can be con-
strued as emphasizing that Christ is less than fully divine. His theological
argument draws heavily on his philosophy of language. He alludes to
various treatises, not all of which can be identied, such as a reconsid-
eration of the Book of Parts, quite possibly a rewriting of the lost rst
section of the Dialectica about the various parts of speech.44 He also refers
to philosophical discussion on matter and form, alluding either to his
commentary on Porphyry or on the topics.45 Abelard expects his readers
to understand his teaching as being about language as much as about
theology.
Our only insight into his thinking about language at the time of the
Theologia Christiana is the Tractatus de intellectibus, which is about the
understandings generated by words.46 This elaboration of ideas raised by
Aristotles Periermeneias is related to Abelards deepening awareness of the
lack of objectivity in all linguistic assertion. He explains that the under-
standings generated by words are not real understandings but estima-
tions of what someone might consider to be the case.47 All the grand
words and phrases used of the divine nature might equally generate un-
derstandings that are ambiguous or misleading if taken out of the context
in which they were made. The same applies to the particular analogies of
species and genus that he offers in relation to the Trinity. They provide
a way of understanding theological language, not a denitive statement
of belief. There is a close relationship between his understanding of the
provisional character of all language and his demonstration that patristic
discussions about the Trinity are necessarily not the nal word on the
subject. While Abelard might respect the sense of what Augustine had
to say about the Father as cause or principle of the Son, he does not
always approve of his terminology.48 Abelards technical discussions in this
part of the Theologia Christiana illustrate the kind of analysis he wanted
his students to adopt when assessing the opinions put forward by the
Fathers of the Church, a technique that leaves little room for any au-
thoritative pronouncement.
Abelards discussion about the relationship between the Father and
Son does not just illustrate his teaching about language. It develops into
analysis of how the Holy Spirit, the goodness or loving-kindness of God,
proceeds from (de) both divine potency and divine wisdom in a way that
is distinct from the generation of the Son out of (ex) the Father. In the
Theologia Christiana, Abelard develops much further this part of his ar-
gument, linking up with his earlier discussion of the world soul as a veiled
image of what Christians call the Holy Spirit. Although aware of the
conventional Augustinian understanding of the Holy Spirit as the love
exchanged by the Father and the Son, he observes that this presumes that
the Holy Spirit can exist even without creation, a paradox if we assume
that Gods loving nature always goes out of itself.49
In a short and unnished fth book, largely devoted to reecting on
what it means to speak of divine unity and divine potency, Abelard
broaches the larger question of what three attributes imply about Gods
nature, an issue he had barely touched in the Theologia Summi boni. He
begins by emphasizing the underlying unity of Gods nature but then ex-
amines the question of what it means to say that God is omnipotent. His
argument is that divine power should never be understood as a thing but
as a potentiality for an action that is fully in accord with Gods wisdom
and goodness. If Gods actions are always wise and good, then it is im-
possible for him to act differently from or better than the way he did.
This is the logical extension of Abelards argument that words about God
are always only partial attempts to describe the divine nature. Whereas
the language of so much Christian belief emphasizes divine omnipotence,
Abelard imagines God as always fundamentally rational in his action.
While few of Abelards contemporaries would contest this logic of arguing,
no one challenged so explicitly the conventional image of God as fully
omnipotent in all three persons. In the fth book, he begins to explore

what divine wisdom means for understanding statements about Gods
power or potential to act.
Abelards vision of Gods behavior, rather sketchily presented in the
fth book of the Theologia Christiana, presents an optimistic vision of
Gods behavior, unaffected by sin or any claims of the devil to act over
humanity. He theorizes that God is not an arbitrary ruler but always acts
in accord with divine reason and goodness. The insight that God, the
supreme good, is rst of all identied by his goodness rather than by his
power is not new. William of Champeaux himself drew this insight from
Augustine but assumed that statements about God, if they were true, did
refer to some reality beyond language. In theological sentences taken
down before Abelard composed the fth book of the Theologia Christiana,
William is reported as rejecting the opinion of some people who argue
that if God foresees everything, it is impossible for something to turn out
differently, as God would then be deceived.50
Underpinning Abelards analysis of the rationality of divine omnipo-
tence is a sense that Gods behavior is dened by a love (caritas) that
exists not for itself but for others. When he quotes Augustine as saying
that caritas is a movement of the spirit to love (ad diligendum) God and
ones neighbor for the sake of God, he leaves out one aspect of Augustines
denition, namely, that love is a movement of the spirit to enjoy (ad
fruendum) God and ones neighbor. Instead, he adopts a Ciceronian
theme, that true love does not seek any reward.51 Instead of raising the
problem of how God could be powerful in a world seemingly ruled by sin,
frequently discussed in questions attributed to William of Champeaux,
Abelard argues that God can only act in the way that he does, namely,
as motivated by love.52 Far more important than any outward works is
the inner intention that makes all else good. Abelards comments about
love parallel some of the ideals that dominate Heloises perception of love.
In the nal section of the Theologia Christiana, Abelard does not draw
any conclusions about love or the divine nature but concentrates on a
linguistic point: that we must always attend to the true meaning of modal
statements used about God. The treatise, at least in its ve-book form,
remains unnished.
A Teacher at the Margin
The style of theological reection articulated in the Sic et non and the
Theologia Christiana differs sharply from that of Hugh of St.-Victor, who
was already emerging in the 1120s as a signicant teacher, taking ideas

of William of Champeaux into a new direction. Hugh shares Abelards
interest in understanding God as powerful, wise, and good, and he looks
at the created world and at sacraments in particular as the medium
through which humanity can return to God. Sometime around 1127,
Hugh was sufciently troubled by reports of opinions attributed to an
unnamed teacher, very likely Abelard, that he asked Bernard of Clairvaux
for his judgment. One was a claim that the scriptural verse about needing
to be reborn through water and the Holy Spirit implied that no one
could be saved without receiving the sacrament; another was that all
those who came before Christ had as much knowledge of the future as
we have of the past; the third was that the passage in Johns Gospel about
needing to be baptized by water and the spirit implies that ignorance is
sinful.53 In response to these reports, evidently based on hearsay and par-
tial understanding, Bernard acknowledges that some had been redeemed
before baptism had been instituted as a sacrament and that God would
surely be merciful to children who died without baptism, but he insists
that the scriptural injunction is not wrong and that ignorance can indeed
be sinful. Those who came before Christ, however faithful they may have
been, were lacking in the completeness of their knowledge. While Ber-
nard insists that he does not know the identity of the inventor of new
hypotheses about whom Hugh is speaking, he afrms that the incarnation
and the sacraments did initiate a new phase in the process of redemption.
Abelards reserve toward traditional claims about the importance of phys-
ical reception of the sacraments, coupled with his emphasis that the un-
baptized might be privy to the same insights as Christians, disconcerted
those who believed that traditional teaching about the sacraments and
thus the authority of the Church was under threat. Hugh of St.-Victor
was not opposed to the idea that the pagans had authority in ethical
matters. In his Didascalicon (perhaps written in the mid-1120s), he argues
that Socrates was the founder of ethics and reportedly wrote twenty-four
books about positive justice, although he does not follow up what Socrates
and his disciples actually taught about the subject.54
Bernard of Clairvaux was not interested in invoking the authority of
ancient pagan philosophers. His gift lay in the rhetorical brilliance with
which he satirized the vices of traditional monasticism and used Scripture,
above all the Song of Songs, to present an image of speaking from per-
sonal experience. Even though Bernard insists that he does not know the
identity of the teacher being spoken about, Abelard may well have con-
strued Bernards letter to Hugh as evidence that the abbot was provoking
public opinion against him. Abelard refers in the Historia calamitatum to
two new apostles stirring up trouble against him. Abelard does not shy
away in his sermons from mocking the populism of Norbert of Xanten
(ca. 10801134), founder of Premontre in the diocese of Laon but pro-
moted in spectacular fashion in 1126 to become archbishop of Magdeburg.
In that same year, Bernard supported an unsuccessful attempt by Alberic
of Reims to become bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne. In 1127, Bernard wrote
to Suger, abbot of St.-Denis, congratulating him on reforms that he had
instituted and for changing the insolence of your former way of life.55
He concludes the letter by urging Suger to have nothing to do with
Stephen of Garlande, dean and provost of many churches (including Ste.-
Genevie`ve and the Cathedral of Sens) as well as chancellor of the king-
dom from 1120 until 1127, when he was ousted from court. Ultrasensitive
to criticism, Abelard may well have assumed that Bernard was behind a
campaign to oust him from positions of power.
Abelard resented the growing inuence of Bernard in the court of the
counts of Champagne, where he initially thought he had found favor. In
1125 Bernard encouraged Count Hugh of Champagne to resign his po-
sition to join the order of the Templars. By January 1128, Bernard had
become a major voice at the Council of Troyes, where the Templar Rule
was approved. Also around this time, Bernard was seeking to win the
favor of Archbishop Henry of Sens (11221142), to whom he addressed
a treatise on the duties of bishops. He reports that the archbishop had
recently submitted to Geoffrey of Le`ves, bishop of Chartres (1116
1149) and successor to Conon of Palestrina as papal legate in France.56
In dedicating the work to Henry, a kinsman of Stephen of Garlande,
Bernard was presenting himself as a moral guide for the most senior levels
of the clergy in France. While there is no evidence that Bernard and
Norbert were themselves responsible for the collapse of the Paraclete,
Abelard blamed them for its demise. He perceived these two gures as
betraying their religious vocation by becoming excessively involved in
matters of public life.
Similar power struggles were taking place in Paris within the cathedral
school of Notre-Dame. A new bishop of Paris, Stephen of Senlis (1123
1141), was endeavoring to assert his authority over a cathedral chapter
in which Stephen of Garlande was still a powerful gure. Gualo, a teacher
of logic who may have taken over Abelards position in 1117, appealed
to Stephen of Garlande and archbishop Henry of Sens, even to Rome
itself, in protest against the efforts of Bishop Stephen of Senlis to stop
him from teaching.57 While we know little about Gualo as a teacher, he
did acquire a reputation for inventing sophisms, called gualdicae, drawn
from the logic of Seneca. It has been suggested that this Gualo provided
the inspiration for John of Salisburys mythical Cornicius, a hypercritical

logician, hostile to all the great teachers of the pastAnselm of Laon,
Alberic of Reims, William of Champeaux, and Hugh of St.-Victorand
that he promoted a self-serving attitude to education.58 Gualo was excom-
municated by the bishop of Paris in 1126/27. Even more importantly, the
bishop ordered that the cathedral school should withdraw from the ca-
thedral cloister, where it was under the supervision of the chapter, to
outside the bishops palace on the south side of Notre-Dame. Gualo seems
to have left Paris, while his students may have migrated to the schools
of Ste.-Genevie`ve. Bishop Stephen also attempted (not wholly success-
fully) to introduce canons of St.-Victor into the Cathedral of Notre-
Dame.59 These measures only encouraged greater polarization, even phys-
ical violence, between forces loyal to the bishop of Paris and the abbot
of St.-Victor, and those loyal to the dean of Ste.-Genevie`ve. This was the
tense situation during which Abelard composed the Historia calamitatum.
The full circumstances behind the fall from grace of Stephen of Gar-
lande in 1127, coupled with the attempts to oust both Gualo and Abelard
from their teaching, are impossible to establish completely. They may be
connected to Stephens desire to forge ties with the Duke of Anjou, op-
posed by Ralph of Vermandois, cousin of King Louis VI and an ally of
Suger of St.-Denis. Ralph was closely involved in a brutal but ultimately
unsuccessful campaign to extend French inuence in Flanders during
1126. Stephen was also viewed with great suspicion by Bernard of Clair-
vaux and others connected to the reform movement, in which Bishop
Geoffrey of Chartres was becoming an increasingly prominent gure. In
a volatile political context, Abelards situation in Champagne was becom-
ing untenable. He subsequently looked back to the years immediately after
1122 as a halcyon period, when he and his disciples were living out ascetic
ideals in a way that was more sincere than the early Cistercians, whom
he accused of being false prophets and of hypocrisy in the way that they
attached themselves to the rich and powerful.60 While Bernard and Ab-
elard were both educated innovators seeking to live out ascetic ideals,
Abelard was critical of Bernards increasingly high prole in public life.
They also differed in their theological perspective. Bernard was a preacher
who distanced himself from the life of the schools, while Abelard sought
to recreate the life of a school at the oratory of the Paraclete. Bernard
was more faithful to Augustinian tradition in developing the theme in
his preaching that the Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, is
able to enter the human soul. In doing so, he introduced an experiential
and poetic way of presenting the theological teaching transmitted by Wil-
liam of Champeaux that had not been seen before. Abelard, by contrast,
was developing a theology based much more around the Holy Spirit,
which he believed had inspired all peoplespagan, Jews, and Chris-
tiansto love the pursuit of wisdom. The long justication that he gives
in the Historia calamitatum to his decision to rededicate his oratory spe-
cically to the Paraclete itself indicates the controversial character of the
theological direction that he wished to take. At a time when all new
Cistercian houses were being dedicated to the Virgin Mary, this conse-
cration to the Paraclete alone could seem suspiciously radical. The oratory
and associated school provided a framework in which Abelard was able
to teach the various arts of logica as much as develop his ideas about a
discipline that he now called theologia rather than divinitas. He revised his
commentaries on Porphyry and Aristotle, but also composed related trea-
tises, notably the De intellectibus, the Grammatica, and perhaps the prom-
ised Rhetorica. He transformed his earlier De trinitate into a much larger
work, the Theologia Christiana, and radically enlarged the scope of the Sic
et non. Abelard did not complete any major synthesis of his teaching
during these years, but he had laid the foundations for an ambitious sys-
tematic overview of both the liberal arts and theology.
8
Heloise and the Paraclete
I n 1127, Peter Abelard gave up the school that he had established around
the oratory of the Paraclete in order to take a position as abbot of St.-
Gildas-de-Ruys, in Brittany. In the Historia calamitatum, written about
1132, not long after he had physically escaped from the region, Abelard
presents himself as having being driven to take refuge in the West by the
jealousy of the French, just as Jerome had been driven to the East by the
jealousy of the Romans. He complains that he did not understand the lan-
guage (or perhaps the dialect) of the region, and that the monks of St.-
Gildas refused to accept the reforms that he wished to implement. Appar-
ently many of them kept mistresses and had fathered children. Abelards life
was also complicated by the demands placed on the abbey by a local mag-
nate. He recalls that this was a moment of severe crisis, as he reected that
nothing he had started seemed to bear fruit. The saying of Jesus, This man
started to build, and he could not nish (Luke 14:30), seemed dangerously
apposite. Abelard does not reveal whether he continued to write during
these early years at St.-Gildas. This was a time of radical crisis, when he was
no longer able to function as a teacher supported by his students.
The Refoundation of the Paraclete
The turning point came in April 1129 when Heloise and her fellow nuns
were expelled by Suger of St.-Denis from the abbey at Argenteuil on
145
grounds of immoral behavior. Suger claimed that the abbey belonged by

ancient right to the Abbey of St.-Denis. The ancient charter that he
claimed to have found supporting this claim appears to be a forgery cre-
ated by Suger himself on the basis of older documents in the archive of
St.-Denis.1 The decision, supported by Ralph of Vermandois and subse-
quently ratied by papal legate Matthew of Albano and other leading
churchmen as well as by Pope Honorius II (11241129), was a major
political victory for Suger. In 1130, Bernard of Clairvaux rejoiced over a
similar eviction of nuns from the Abbey of St.-Jean in Laon, which was
restored from being a brothel of Venus to a sanctuary of God.2 Suger
reports that nuns at Argenteuil led a wretched way of life and speaks
elsewhere of their extraordinary levity.3 The ideal of moral reform
helped justify taking over a property, strategically situated on the Seine,
whose income and location greatly helped Sugers larger project of re-
building his own abbey. The fall from grace of Stephen of Garlande, who
had previously acted on behalf of Argenteuil, made it easier to assert what
he considered to be the ancient rights of St.-Denis.
Suger may also have been troubled by the reputation of Heloise. While
no corpus of writing survives bearing clear conrmation of her authorship,
she seems to have applied herself with renewed vigor to the study of
literature after she became a nun around 1117/18. One clue to her cre-
ative activity is provided by a poem, attached by a nun of Argenteuil to
the mortuary roll for Vital of Savigny (d. September 16, 1122), a cele-
brated preacher and religious reformer with a reputation for spurning
wealth and attracting fallen women to the communities he founded.
The poem is an eloquent lament for a community that has lost its shep-
herd and has left only sorrow in its wake. It also reects on the reason
behind suffering: What use is so much and so widespread sorrow? / Sor-
row here is good for nothing, rather it harms. / But although nothing
useful follows from mourning, / it is human, however, to mourn the death
of a father; / it is also pious to rejoice, if the force of reason / is able to
annihilate the powers of sadness.4 This reection on sorrow (dolor) and
awareness of death recalls the introspective tone of some of the womans
later poems in the Epistolae duorum amantium. Whereas Abelard detached
himself from personal crisis by devoting himself to the theory of language,
Heloise found consolation in literature.
Heloise may also have composed two short Easter plays, modeled on
the so-called Sponsus drama from Limoges, while at Argenteuil. The cen-
tral gure in these plays is Mary Magdalene, the woman who seeks out
Jesus after his death.5 A section of one of their dialogues, known as Epi-
thalamica, was certainly preserved within the Paraclete liturgy. The plays,
heloise and the paraclete 147
written with a love for rhyming prose similar to that in the womans letters
in the Epistolae duorum amantium, introduce a strongly human element
into their presentation of Mary Magdalene as a woman seeking her be-
loved. Extending the familiar Quem quaeritis? liturgical drama about seek-
ing out the risen Lord (practiced in many monastic houses), they explore
how Mary seeks out Jesus, bringing ointment, initially obtained for her
own adornment, to care for his body. These short dramas provide a rhe-
torical medium for reecting on the character of true love and devotion
and are fully resonant with the concerns of Heloise.
A poetic lament (Laudis honor), written in the voice of an unusually
learned woman who is interested in both philosophy and poetry but forced
by changed political circumstances to ee where she is living, could also
be a composition of Heloise. The poet regrets that the honor of praise,
love of probity, and pagan virtue have perished and have given way to
gnawing envy, and complains to Clio, faithful companion, that we
have been driven from the new world because our concern is with let-
ters.6 There has been a change of leaders; where once her writing used
to please, her poems now cause their hearts to rage. This learned woman
explicitly associates this change of leadership with a new religion, a holy
withdrawal from life, in which holiness is deemed not to be about know-
ing anything, but about simply being good. Like Abelard, she argues that
God will be better understood by someone in whom reasoning is already
present. She insists that God does not forbid what she is doing. Her
mistake has been to celebrate the good and bad deeds of princes in
verse, provoking the hostility of some unidentied but inuential critic.
She mockingly repeats the accusations made against her: It is not for
holy women to compose verses, nor for us to ask who Aristotle might be.
Her accuser disparages genus, species, or rhetorical color, or the necessity
of recording arguments. This little phrase suggests that this learned
woman is equally interested in both dialectic and rhetoric. Her argument
about the importance of knowing these skills echoes Abelards defense of
the liberal arts in the Theologia Christiana and Theologia Scholarium. The
poem, addressed to Clio, is effectively the reverse of Heloises poetic ap-
peal to the Muses in the Epistolae duorum amantium (Letter 66). Its style
is not unlike that of the poems exchanged at Angers between Baudri of
Bourgueil and nuns of Le Ronceray (for whom Abelard signed a charter
on March 15, 1128). Its lament about a change of rulers ts in well with
the political crisis of the late 1120s, when a pro-Angevin Stephen of
Garlande was ousted by the combined inuence of Ralf of Vermandois
and Suger of St.-Denis. The poem complains of a decline of interest in
classical culture at the expense of religious ideals that distrust secular
learning. This is precisely the cultural shift deplored by Abelard in his

theological writings from the early 1130s.
Some of the nuns of Argenteuil, including its abbess, chose to retire
to the distant Benedictine community of Ste.-Marie de Footel, in Mal-
noue, near Champigny-sous-Varennes, in the upper reaches of the Marne
(from where they were still demanding compensation from St.-Denis later
in the century). Heloise, elected as prioress during the previous decade,
chose a different path. Presumably in answer to her request (the Historia
calamitatum is silent on the question of her initiative), Abelard invited
Heloise and those sisters who wished to follow her to take over the prop-
erty he had been given around the oratory of the Paraclete. This de-
manded a much more austere way of life than practiced at Argenteuil or
available at Malnoue. Abelard expresses his admiration for the way in
which Heloise was able to make much more of a success of the Paraclete
in its early years than he ever could, and idealizes her as someone who
was much more successful than he had ever been in becoming a gure
much admired and respected by bishops, abbots, and laypeople alike. The
early charters of the Paraclete reveal that Heloise obtained signicant
support from the Count and Countess of Blois and Champagne. On No-
vember 30, 1131, through the intervention of Bishop Hato of Troyes
(11221146), she gained papal protection for her community from Pope
Innocent II, then in exile in France and closely associated with Bernard
of Clairvaux. Hato, a friend of both Peter the Venerable and Bernard,
played a key role during these years in improving relationships between
Cluny and the Cistercians after Bernards polemical assault on traditional
monasticism in his Apologia.
Initially, Abelard kept his distance from the edgling community, one
of many new communities founded in the years as part of a wider move-
ment to recover the values of early Christians. The way of life, or ordo,
followed at Cteaux, founded in 1098 by monks dissatised with reforms
implemented at Molesme, had become particularly inuential as a model
for reformed communities through the energetic preaching of Bernard of
Clairvaux. The Augustinian canons whom Norbert of Xanten established
at Premontre in the diocese of Laon based many of their observances on
the pattern established by Cteaux. The way of life followed at the Par-
aclete during these early years was not radically different from that of
other womens communities, such as Jully and Tart, that were based on
ideals of authenticity and simplicity similar to those of Cistercian monks
without formally being subject to the same ordo.7 There was no single
identity to these new communities, which had to work out their own
observances and liturgical identity without the rmer institutional struc-
tures that developed in the second half of the century. A brief comment
by Abelard in his rst reply to Heloise that he is sending at her request
a Psalter (probably a book of psalms, with appropriate antiphons) suggests
that even before the Historia calamitatum, Abelard was helping shape the
Paraclete liturgy.8 When her community obtained papal approval in 1131,
she seemed to her ecclesiastical admirers to be fully committed to ideals
of reform promoted by Bernard of Clairvaux and the papal court. The
ofcial document refers to her community as an oratory dedicated to the
Holy Trinity. Even though she would have been under pressure to follow
observances similar to other reformed communities being established in
those years, she was keen to have Abelard contribute to the life of the
community.
Complaints from people in the neighborhood that he was not doing
enough for the nuns apparently prompted Abelard to visit them more
often, but this in turn provoked suspicions about his motives. These
charges played a major role in prompting him to use the example of his
own life as a guide to how Gods love and goodness will always turn the
most difcult situation to a positive end. Reestablishing the Paraclete,
offering guidance even just in matters of liturgical practice, provided him
with a new lease on life and an opportunity to develop new talents.
Whereas the monks of St.-Gildas were unresponsive and even openly
hostile to his efforts, the nuns provided an example of godly openness to
the working of the Paraclete, under the inspiration of Heloise.
Abelard does not reveal where he was living when he wrote the His-
toria calamitatum, saying only that he had recently escaped from the abbey
through the assistance of a certain nobleman and that now he was effec-
tively a fugitive with no xed abode. He may well be exaggerating the
difculty of his situation for rhetorical effect. There is a possibility that
he had already reestablished himself in Paris. According to the chronicle
of Morigny, Abelard attended the solemn dedication of a new altar at the
abbey by Pope Innocent II in January 1131 amid a distinguished assembly
of cardinals and ecclesiastics, including Bernard of Clairvaux. Abelard is
described in glowing terms by a monk of Morigny as a monk and abbot,
a most distinguished religious man and teacher of the schools, to whom
educated men from almost the whole Latin world used to come.9 One
of the cardinals present was Guy of Castello, who owned a copy of Ab-
elards working draft of the Theologia Christiana and Sic et non, as it stood
in the early 1130s. Abelard may have already taken refuge with Stephen
of Garlande, dean of the Abbey of Ste.-Genevie`ve. Stephen had returned
to royal favor by late 1131 and resumed his position as royal chancellor
(although not that of seneschal) by 1132. During the course of 1132/33,
Stephens position came under renewed assault when the Abbey of Ste.-
Genevie`ve was placed under an interdict by the bishop of Paris and its
vineyards uprooted by soldiers of Louis VI. In August 1133, Thomas, prior
of St.-Victor, was murdered by nephews of Archdeacon Theobald, an ally
of Stephen of Garlande. Abelards polemical allusions to hypocritical re-
ligious reformers excessively involved in public life reect the polarized
rhetoric between rival communities during these years.
The Historia calamitatum and the

Response of Heloise
The Historia calamitatum seeks not just to dispel the rumors surrounding
Abelards past but to present a theological message from the authority of
his own experience. He wants to persuade his reader, whom he knows is
going through difcult times, that Gods goodness, manifest through the
Holy Spirit, will always prevail. While there was a long literary tradition
of using the sufferings of Christ, Job, or the saints as a way of coping with
distress and looking forward to a better world, Abelard uses his own life
story to argue that Gods goodness is always working out to a positive end
in this world. This tendency to use ones own life as an exemplum had
started to gain ground in monastic authors of the eleventh and early
twelfth centuries such as Otloh of St. Emmeram and Guibert of Nogent,
but generally in order to communicate a strongly Augustinian contrast
between fallen human nature, prey to sin, and the temptations of the
esh, on the one hand, and the ideal of life in Christ, attained only
through divine grace, on the other. Perhaps closer to Abelards account
is a letter by a canon of Chartres, who writes about his life in the early
1130s as illustrating the working out of providence.10 Abelards account
is itself a masterpiece of narrative art in which specic experiences, pre-
sented with great detail, are used to illuminate an original theological
argument intended to be universal in application. Rather than imitate
Augustine in speaking about divine grace cleansing him from original sin,
he prefers to offer the letters of Jerome as showing how difculty can be
overcome by trusting in the goodness of the Holy Spirit. His past misdeeds
were the fruit not of original sin but of falling victim to the vices of
debauchery and pride. While he implicitly describes his sufferings as like
those of Jesus, he never consciously appeals to the transcendent Son or
Word of God, identied so intimately by Bernard of Clairvaux as the
eternal Bridegroom coming to visit the soul. Instead, he urges his readers
to recall Gods continuing goodness and love for creation, manifested in

the Holy Spirit, who never abandons those who love God.
We never learn the precise identity of the friend, addressed as beloved
brother in Christ and most familiar companion in the religious way of
life. Abelard hopes that his writing will comfort this friend for the des-
olation and injury that he has suffered. This friend may be no more than
a ctional literary device by which he imagines Heloise and seeks to
communicate with her, while also seeking to reach a wider audience. He
urges his friend to reect on the capacity of the Holy Spirit to provide
consolation in the most difcult of situations. Heloise is the only known
reader of the Historia calamitatum in the twelfth century. Writing this
narrative enabled Abelard to identify meaning behind the disasters that
had aficted him in the past while moving beyond the level of personal
reminiscence. He presents the calamities by which he was aficted not as
punishments but as providential opportunities that enabled him to curb
those vices of pride and lust into which he had fallen and to acknowledge
divine goodness. Inevitably he simplies the complexities of his past be-
havior to communicate his theme. He expects his readers to recognize
that in blaming the jealousy (invidia) of his rivals, he is presenting himself
as like Ovid and Jerome, unjustly persecuted by their contemporaries.
Reading his narrative in purely psychological terms as the work of a par-
anoid personality ignores the literary and theological rhetoric that shapes
his narrative.
Abelards detailed account of the inspirational example of Jerome in
his concern for Paula and Asella had particular relevance for the nuns of
the Paraclete, as did so much of his account of its early history. He ef-
fectively provides a record of the circumstances that led up to the re-
foundation of her community, as well as a way for her to understand her
own past. Writing about his past enabled him to offer a degree of pastoral
support while maintaining what he considered to be an appropriate level
of distance. Yet the narrative did not satisfy Heloise. She opens her initial
response to his account with a carefully crafted greeting that begins in
conventional form by addressing him as her master and herself as his
handmaiden but concludes, quite simply, To Abelard, Heloise. The sal-
utation is a masterpiece of concise expression, created by someone who
had once exchanged many letters with Abelard in the past but had
stopped communicating in this way. By her greeting she declares her desire
to communicate with Abelard not with polite formality but as one indi-
vidual to another, as they had once done in the past. She articulates a
tendency evident in many letter writers in the late eleventh and early
twelfth centuries, both inside and outside a monastic milieu, to replace a

standard public greeting with a more nuanced expression of personal af-
fection.11 Subtly responding to Abelards account in the persona of both
a female disciple of Jerome and an Ovidian heroine, she declares that far
from being comforted by reading his account, she is distressed by learning
of the difculties that Abelard still encounters. True consolation, she ar-
gues, is offered through writing. Rather than turning to Jerome, as Abelard
had recommended in his narrative, she turns to a comment made by a
favorite author, Seneca writing to Lucilius, about letters making present
an absent friend. (Abelard never quoted from Senecas letters in his Theo-
logia, and in the Historia calamitatum he only does so when reporting her
speech against marriage.)12 In crafted rhyming prose, she reminds Abelard
that the Paraclete is solely his creation and that he owes great responsi-
bility to the women he has gathered there. Above all, she asks, why has
he given comfort to a male friend but not to her, ever since their difcult
early beginnings in the religious life? Her letter is a knife pricking Abelard
for ignoring the reality of her situation. Her claim that he alone can
provide her with consolation rebukes his claim that comfort only comes
from the consoling goodness of the Holy Spirit. Her letter moves from
sympathy to serious accusation, tackling Abelard on the weakest point in
his narrative, namely, his portrayal of their early relationship as one of
fornication rather than of seless love. It also highlights the weakest point
in his theology, that in speaking so much about reason he ignores the
complexity of human nature. She acknowledges that he had presented
some of her arguments against marriage, those drawn from Jerome and
the ancient philosophers, but chides him for passing over those she had
made about preferring love to marriage, freedom to chains. I call God as
my witness that if Augustus, ruling over the whole world, had thought t
to honor me with marriage, it would seem dearer and more worthy to me
to be called your prostitute than his empress.13 This recalls a frequent
theme in her early love letters: that true love does not seek any external
gain. The young Heloise had even made a very similar point (although
not specically in relation to marriage) in letter 82, that even if she could
enjoy all the wealth of Caesar, such riches would be of no use to her. As
with Abelards account, reading her letter simply as an outpouring of the
heart ignores the rhetorical skill with which she formulates her ethical
argument. As in her early letters to Abelard, she is applying classical ideals
about true friendship as not seeking external reward to her ideal of amor.
Her comment about preferring to be called a meretrix rather than an
imperatrix uses rhyming prose to dramatize her argument that true love is
unconcerned with wealth or outward reputation. It gives a classical turn
to the saying of Jesus that prostitutes enter the kingdom of heaven before
the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 21:31), and evokes the example of Mary
Magdalene as the one truly devoted to Jesus.
As if reminding Abelard of discussions in which they had once en-
gaged, she reminds him of the advice given by Aspasia to Xenophon and
his wife, reported by Cicero in his De inventione as an example of induc-
tive argument based on analogy: Unless one believes that ones husband
or wife is perfect, one is always going to be frustrated in ones quest.14
This, she says, is wisdom rather than philosophy. She rejects Abelards
implicit assumption in the Historia calamitatum that true friendship is be-
tween men and is quite unlike love between a man and a woman, satirized
to such effect by Ovid in his Ars amatoria. She is accusing him of not
recalling their earlier attempt to fuse the ideals of love and friendship
articulated by Ovid, Cicero, and Scripture within their love letters.
As in her earlier letters, Heloise argues that amor, amicitia, and dilectio
are aspects of the same ideal. Whereas Abelard wants to show that Gods
love is far larger than frail human desire, her concern is not with a heav-
enly reward but with what constitutes truly moral behavior. She is trou-
bled by the thought that perhaps Abelard was only bound by lust rather
than amor. Her closing message is that he should write to her as often as
in the past, when he showered her with frequent letters and made her
name famous. Whereas Abelard was attempting to distance himself from
the still lingering image that he was a jongleur of love, she sees amor as
an ideal of true friendship. He should not neglect that it is his duty to
provide true consolation.
Abelards rst reply, addressed to Heloise as his dearly beloved sister
in Christ, seeks to preserve their relationship as one of spiritual dilectio,
quite different from sexual passion, to which he does not refer at all in
this letter. As in the early love letters, he picks up the literary game that
she initiates, but denes his relationship to her in universal rather than
individual terms. His message is that she should devote herself to prayer
on the model of so many women in both the Old and New Testaments.
While at rst sight his response may seem traditional, he is in fact ten-
tatively sketching out what will become an important theme in his ser-
mons and other writing for the Paraclete, namely, the special role played
by women in the history of salvation. He quotes extensively from Scrip-
ture to support his claim, but provides no testimony from the Fathers to
support his case. Abelard offers an original reading of Scripture not di-
rectly paralleled in the writings of Jerome, who addressed pious women
without developing a theory of their place in the story of redemption. He
suggests a special prayer that the nuns can use to pray for him at a time
of difculty, urging that they model themselves on the women waiting at

the tomb of Jesus. The nal farewell, Live, fare you well, yourself and
your sisters with you, / Live, but I pray, in Christ be mindful of me, picks
up a familiar play on the words farewell and fare you well in the love
letters, but now sharply distinguishes them from any erotic relationship.15
Heloises second reply begins by neatly transforming Abelards previous
greeting into a more personal form: To her only one after Christ, she
who is his alone in Christ. Unicus, a favored term that he had used of
her in his early love letters, drives home her desire that he speak not as
an abbot to a disciple but as Abelard to Heloise. As if to highlight the
contradiction between these two modes of writing, she chides him for not
reversing the order of his greeting and saying Abelard to Heloise as if
from a superior to an inferior. If he is simply giving spiritual instruction,
this is how he ought to address his spiritual daughters. If he is addressing
her as a friend, he needs to be more personal. Her second letter com-
municates passionate intensity with great literary skill. She accuses him
of causing her distress by talking about his possible death, and then pro-
claims even more explicitly than before the depth of her commitment to
Abelard, whom she has always followed before all else. She quotes from
another letter of Seneca to Lucilius: Why is it necessary to summon
evil?16 Rather than trusting in the consoling power of the Holy Spirit,
she expresses anger against God for what he has allowed to happen and
sees herself as the victim of cruel fortune. Drawing on Stoic wisdom, she
challenges the entire theological edice to which Abelard has committed
himself. Above all, she cannot accept that the castration he suffered could
have been approved by God. Could she have been the cause of this evil,
like so many women recorded in Scripture as bringing about the downfall
of men? There is a profound ethical issue involved. Was their sexual
liaison a sin meriting divine punishment, or was her uncles response itself
against the will of God? She insists that she never consented to this crime,
while acknowledging that she is not without guilt. Her difculty is that
even if she is guilty in some measure, she cannot feel true repentance for
her behavior, as her intentions are pure. In language that strikes at the
heart of Abelards theological project, she accuses God of cruelty rather
than of being the source of goodness. Even during the solemn moments
of the mass, she can only think of the pleasures they once enjoyed. Her
letter builds to a crescendo, urging Abelard to stop idealizing her for
purely theological ends. Her complaint is with all those in religious life
who consider her chaste but do not realize what a hypocrite I am. This
is a personal admission far deeper than anything Abelard has to say in
the Historia calamitatum. Whereas he had proclaimed that castration had
helped him recover from debauchery, she protests that she has not
changed in her inner disposition after all these years. Heloises second
letter is rich in allusion to Scripture, which she uses to reinforce her
argument about avoiding extravagant praise and respecting the frailty of
the human condition. She does not want him to quote scriptural phrases
such as Power comes to its full strength in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9) and
He cannot win a crown unless he has kept the rules (2 Tim. 2:5) She
seeks no crown of victory.17 Cleverly transforming Abelards injunction to
read Jerome for spiritual consolation, she also quotes a passage from his
Adversus Vigilantium in which Jerome speaks with unusual humility: I
confess my weakness. I do not wish to ght in hope of victory, lest the
day comes when I lose the battle. What need is there to forsake what is
certain and pursue uncertainty?18 While this is not a passage from Jerome
that Abelard had ever quoted in his Theologia or Sic et non, he does allude
to it twice in his Collationes, raising the possibility that when he penned
the arguments that the Christian puts to the philosopher, he was indi-
rectly responding to this letter of Heloise.19
Abelards second reply is couched in more personal terms than his
initial response, but he reafrms that Heloise is the bride of Christ rather
than his own beloved. Each of her complaints receives an answer, not
so much in self-justication as for your own enlightenment.20 He justies
putting her name before his by quoting Jeromes rhetorical elevation of
Eustochium as the bride of Christ, but then develops a new interpretation
of the phrase I am black but beautiful (Song of Songs 1:4). He suggests
that a woman may be black on the outside, but is beautiful within, a
veiled way of complimenting Heloise on her humility and critique of
extravagance. To her complaint that he has distressed her by talking of
his imminent death, he responds by urging that true friends are found in
shared adversity. Her third complaint, criticism of extravagant praise, is a
theme of which he approves, but he warns that forbidding praise can lead
to false humility. To her nal point, that old and frequent complaint of
yours, about their mode of entry into religious life, he can only urge that
she accept Gods will. By dwelling on the fornication of their past rela-
tionship (recalling an episode in the refectory of Argenteuil not men-
tioned in the Historia calamitatum), he argues that his castration was in-
deed providential. Rather than addressing Heloises claim that her love
was pure, he dwells on what he sees as the lust that bound him to her in
the past, so as to nd justication in the punishment that was meted out
to him. He avoids her ethical question about her failure to feel true re-
pentance by focusing uniquely on his own situation, of lust nding phys-
ical punishment. Instead, he urges her to focus her love on the gure of
Christ, not so much as the eternal Son of God but as the gure who
suffered and died on the cross. These pages provide valuable insight into
his early reection on Jesus, rather than on the eternal Son of God, about
whom he had written so much in relation to the Trinity. If there was a
weakness in his early theological writing, it was that he concentrated so
much on language about God and an abstract notion of the Holy Spirit
that he did not, at least during the 1120s, write at any length about
devotion to Jesus or about human nature. Responding to Heloise enabled
him to develop the argument that true love and friendship was manifest
in Jesus as a historical person, through a life lived for others, even in his
ignominious death. By comparison with the love of Jesus, Abelard sees
his own past love for Heloise as lust, enmeshed in sin.21 He compares the
emotional suffering of Heloise to the suffering of a martyr. By contrast,
he claims that he is the one who is deprived of a crown of victory, as the
source of lust has been removed. He concludes by offering her a prayer
of contrition, urging punishment in this world, so that there would be no
punishment in the future, a position which the Christian implicitly ac-
cepts when arguing that the suffering of the soul in death is so great that
it is sufcient to purge any person of suffering in the future.
Abelard does not speak in these letters, or indeed anywhere else, about
purgatory as a place for the purgation of sins. According to a subsequent
remark on Romans 4:7 (about the forgiveness of sin), he thinks punish-
ment in this world extinguishes punishment in the future.22 In the Col-
lationes, the philosopher argues that through the act of contrition and the
compunction of true penitence, everlasting punishment is remitted, al-
though there may still be worldly punishment.23 In his letter to Heloise,
Abelard does not raise these broader theological questions, and is not
willing to confront the issue of why Heloise should not feel true repen-
tance for sin, but he lays the foundation for what will develop into a
signicant body of doctrine, both in relation to Christs redemption
through the example of his love and the nature of true repentance for sin.
Building Up the Paraclete
In her third letter, Heloise reinforces her desire that they should com-
municate as they used to in the past by reworking her greeting with great
conciseness: To him who is hers specially, she who is his singularly (Suo
specialiter, sua singulariter). The greeting plays on the profound equiva-
lence of the way they used describe each other in their earlier, more
intimate exchanges. She used to call him specialis, while he, as a dialec-
tician (for whom specialis has a technical meaning, of being of a species),

prefers the epithet singularis.24 Heloises greeting neatly crystallizes her
argument that whichever words they use, she wishes to speak to Abelard
as an individual. Aware, however, that Abelard is uncomfortable in dis-
cussing personal ethics, she turns instead toward the question of ethics in
religious life. As in her early letters, she is fascinated by the power of the
spirit (animus) that drives speech. To justify switching her subject, she
quotes a vivid image from Ciceros Tusculan Disputations, another text
never quoted by Abelard, about a new thought expelling an old, just as
one nail drives out another hammered in.25 To describe her zeal in writing,
she quotes a scriptural phrase, From the abundance of the heart, the
mouth speaks (Matt. 12:34), which the young Abelard had used to de-
scribe the copious and yet insufcient richness of your letters and later
in the Theologia Christiana to describe the wisdom of the Word of God
speaking through the form of words.26
Although the specic request she puts to him is that he write both an
account of the historical authority for the way of life of religious women
and a rule for the women of the Paraclete that takes into account the
particularity of their situation, not allowed for by the Rule of Benedict,
her letter is in reality a profound reection on the ethical demands of
true religious life. She begins with relatively minor issues confronting
women in religious life, such as the difculty women experience in im-
plementing to the letter what the Rule of Benedict has to say about
undergarments or welcoming male guests to a table. She cleverly quotes
both Ovid, the poetic doctor of debauchery and shame, for a vivid
comment about how at banquets, girls might bewitch young men, and
Venus in wine is re in re, and Jerome, about restricting women from
visiting religious women, to highlight the daily dilemmas that confront
any female community. She is troubled by the thought that not observing
any single precept of the Rule might imply failure to respect its spirit. Just
as she articulates frustration with judging good and bad behavior from
appearances alone, so she observes the difculty experienced by women
who seek to observe faithfully the Rule of Benedict. If women were the
weaker sex, surely any rule had to recognize the particular situation of
women as distinct from men. As if in a subtle critique of those Cistercian
reformers who considered that failing to observe the Benedictine Rule to
the letter was to permit corruption of monastic ideals, she argues that
Benedict, a champion of moderation, never intended these to be observed
rigidly. To defend the notion of a religio laicorum, she points to the ex-
amples of Abraham, David, Job, and all married people, and quotes a
passage of Chrysostom on Hebrews afrming that Paul was not just speak-
ing to monks, a passage cited more briey by Abelard in the Sic et non
to argue that marriage is enjoined by God.27 Heloise sees the passage as
a reminder that we are asked to carry out the gospel, not to go beyond
it. She picks up other passages of Jerome and Augustine (also present in
the Sic et non) that argue that one should not impose excessive demands
on anyone.28 Some of the texts to which she has access, such as the
Saturnalia of Macrobius, which she quotes for Aristotles teaching that
women are less likely to become drunk because they expel uids on a
monthly basis, are not ones that Abelard ever refers to.29 Others, like
Augustines De bono conjugali, were used by Abelard in the Sic et non to
discuss whether intercourse could ever be without sin, and effectively to
argue that continence is a virtue not of the body but of the soul.30
The richly textured analysis of Heloise, couched as a request for spir-
itual assistance, outlines her understanding of regulations in religious life.
Outward rules have no purpose if they do not relate to the inner life. Her
argument applies Pauls contrast between outward religious observance
and living by faith to a rejection of articial ethical rules, but without
Pauls emphasis (at least as understood by Augustine) that human nature
is fallen and needs the grace of Christ in order to lead an ethical life. She
sees Paul more as the critic of external religion and advocate of the su-
premacy of love rather than as the critic of those who do not have faith
in Christ. Her central argument is that intention has to be the guiding
criterion for all human action. While Abelard had often spoken about
the importance of understanding the correct intention behind ordinary
language and religious discourse, he had not applied the notion at any
length to behavior in the Theologia Christiana or in the Historia calami-
tatum. In those texts, he had repeated Jeromes teaching about sexual
purity to prove that pagans had the same insights as Christians, without
questioning that sexual promiscuity was wrong. In her rst letter, Heloise
had rebuked Abelard for reproducing only traditional philosophical ar-
guments against marriage, and not understanding what she had said about
true love as identical to true friendship. With her third letter, she nds a
better way of engaging with Abelard in exploring ethical behavior: by
focusing more tightly on issues of religious observance. She closes her
third letter by asking for Abelards assistance in more specic matters,
namely, asking whether her nuns need to repeat certain psalms when
reciting the whole Psalter over any given week. There is also a practical
issue to resolve, about having a priest or deacon read the Gospel during
the night ofce, a potential source of sexual distraction for the nuns.
Heloise shares the zeal of the early Cistercians for authenticity in the
practice of religious life, but believes that one has to go beyond the Rule
of Benedict to Scripture itself to nd authority for the religious life. She

does not think that monks have necessarily greater virtue than lay people
or canons regular, who eat meat and use linen. Too many people are
rushing into the religious life without understanding its demands. Her
criticism is not directed against Benedict but against the imposition of
unnecessary burdens that distract from the true goal of the religious life,
the reform of the inner person. She aligns herself with Paul in teaching
that the true fulllment and goal of the law is love.
The two treatises that Heloise requested, on the history of women in
religion and a rule for the Paraclete, forced Abelard to extend his interest
to topics to which he had not previously given much attention. When
writing for his students, Abelard had argued that there was a fundamental
identity between pagan philosophical wisdom and Christian theology, but
he took for granted that enquiry into the supreme good was a fundamen-
tally male pursuit. While Abelard had remarked that the prophetic tes-
timony of the Sybils showed God had not restricted his revelation to men,
his theology had been focused more on theoretical than practical issues.
He had also written much more about the Holy Spirit than the injunc-
tions given by Jesus about how to live. In the rst of his two treatises, he
develops the idea that the way of life of religious women, as indeed of
monks, takes its form from the teaching of Jesus, who called both women
and men to follow him. The nuns should imitate the women who were
devoted to Jesus, above all Mary Magdalene, who poured ointment on
his head and wiped his feet with her hair and who was assumed to be the
same Mary as came rst to the tomb.31 The attention that he gives to the
devotion of Mary Magdalene to Jesus, even when it was questioned by
other disciples, parallels not just what Abelard has to say in his sermons
to the Paraclete but also the Easter plays that Wulstan has attributed to
Heloise.32 In presenting her with the example of Mary Magdalenes love
for Jesus, Abelard could simply be formulating back to Heloise ideas that
she had already developed at Argenteuil. Whereas Bernard of Clairvaux
presents the Virgin as embodying the soul attentive to the Word of God,
Abelard prefers the image of Mary Magdalene as the one who loves Christ
above all others. She provides the basis for his subsequent account of the
role of women in the story of redemption. There is little specic discussion
of ethical questions in his narrative, which is structured more around
praise for the capacity of women to lead a virtuous life than analysis of
what this demands. The examples of Deborah, Judith, and Esther show
that women shine with as much strength as any great male leader. He
even uses their example to urge brothers and fellow monks (perhaps an
allusion copied from some earlier treatise) to see how they are put to
shame by the constancy of womens devotion.33 There have also been

many pagan women who have laid a foundation for the religious life by
their commitment to virtue, just like those disciples of Jerome and like
Eustochium, Paula, and Asella. Abelard does not explore in this treatise
an implicit tension between Mary Magdalene, traditionally believed to be
non-virginal, and Jeromes exhortations to these women that they commit
themselves to the ideal of virginity. His technique is more to juxtapose a
range of different examples for the edication of Heloise and her com-
munity.
Just as Heloise had opened her letter by drawing on Ciceros image of
one nail driving out another, so Abelard introduces his Rule for the nuns
of the Paraclete by another image from Cicero. Ignoring Heloises urging
that he desist from eulogy, he invokes the example of the painter Zeuxis
who used ve girls made beautiful by nature as models for his art (an
example reported by Cicero in his De inventione)as a precedent for his
own treatise, in which he wishes to portray the spiritual beauty of He-
loise.34 Having established the rhetorical base for his argument, he an-
nounces that the three key principles of religious life for women are con-
tinence, renunciation, and silence. In formulating these principles, he
modies the list he had given in the second book of the Theologia Chris-
tiana of the key virtues taught by pagan philosophers, namely, continence,
renunciation, and magnanimity. Continence he denes not by reference
to Augustines denition that it has to do with the soul rather than the
body, but to the practice of chastity as idealized by Jerome. Abelards
exhortation is more traditional than Heloises critique of false virtue and
exterior appearance. He does not disguise his fear of unrestrained sexuality
and loose talk, and understands silence as a necessary instrument for re-
pressing what he sees as a distinctly feminine quality: The more sensitive
it is in you, and the more exible from your softness of body, the more
mobile and given to words it is, and can be seen to be the seedbed of all
evil.35 This leads him to commend favorably the Pauline injunctions (1
Tim 2:1112 and 4:13) that a woman should not speak in church, or
teach or dominate a man. These criticisms, like the comments he makes
in the Historia calamitatum about religious houses where men were sub-
ordinate to women, signal an unease with Heloises capacity to speak her
mind, paradoxically at odds with his past fascination with her conversa-
tion. The ideals that he wishes Heloise and her nuns to cultivate are not
those of philosophical debate, as pursued at the original school he con-
ducted at the Paraclete, but silent study and devotion.
Abelard imagines the ideal female community as ordered like a small
army under the authority of a diaconissa, who is now called the abbess.36
He disliked the term abbess, on the grounds that etymologically abba

means father, while diaconissa has scriptural sanction. The deaconess
should devote herself to philosophical study and disputation if she has
the education for it; otherwise, she should devote herself to good deeds.
The traditional quality of his ethical values comes out in his identifying
external temptation as a more serious threat than false or external and
insincere actions. All the nuns, even the mother superior, should stay
enclosed within the community, served by monks who celebrate the Eu-
charist. External duties should be negotiated by monks or lay brothers
rather than by religious women.37 This was not an unusual situation for
female communities, who needed priests and deacons to perform sacra-
mental duties, thus reinforcing a traditional gender hierarchy within any
religious community. Above the deaconess, Abelard imagined a provost,
whose duty was to minister to the nuns like a steward in a kings palace
who does not oppress the queen by his powers but treats her wisely, so
that he obeys her at once in necessary matters but pays no heed to what
might be harmful.38 The provosts duty is to ensure that these women
keep themselves free from carnal pollution. The brothers in the com-
munity should not lord over the women and should not do anything
against the will of the deaconess.
Abelards account of the different duties within the abbey is detailed
in the extreme, and presumes an unusual level of prosperity, even though
he insists that in all things sobriety must be observed. The nuns should
devote themselves above all to study, and avoid all risk of sexual temp-
tation. They should receive the Eucharist only three times a year (Easter,
Pentecost, and Christmas), and then from an older priest, after mass was
nished. Only well into his discussion does Abelard introduce the themes
raised by Heloise: that only when we act against our conscience do we
sin (1 John 3:2123) and that nothing is unclean in the eyes of Christ
(1 Cor. 8:13). The argument is less developed than in Heloises letter,
from which Abelard copies a signicant section about the dangers of wine.
He uses the quotation she discovered in Macrobius about women not
being as likely as men to get as drunk to support his instruction that they
should either abstain from or dilute wine.39 He cites a passage of Ambrose
that Heloise had used to great effect in her second letterI have more
easily found those who have kept their innocence than who have done
true penance (a favorite saying of Bernard of Clairvaux)but quotes it
more fully to explain that Ambrose was saying he could not repent amid
pouring out of wine and conjugal enjoyment of intercourse.40 Ever so
subtly, he turns passages that Heloise had discovered to a slightly different
end from the one she had conceived.
Only when dealing with whether meat and wine are forbidden in
themselves does he begin to develop an ethical theory comparable to the
principles formulated by Heloise. While he picks up her terminology,
drawn from Seneca, that some things are indifferent rather than good or
bad, he still feels that wine, like marriage, cannot be wholly free from
sin. He has difculty in integrating reections about ethics in general with
specic instructions about what nuns should or should not do. Although
he had promoted the key role played by women in the history of salvation,
he sees their role as living quietly and virtuously. He is harshly critical of
monks who attach themselves to secular authorities in the hope of gaining
inuence.41 The virtue of religious women, as he sees it, lies in their being
detached from worldly ambition. Quoting Jerome, he urges these women
to apply themselves to quell sexual desire: Love knowledge of letters
[Jerome had said of Scripture] and you will not love the vices of the
esh.42 This is the same antithesis as Abelard evokes in the Historia
calamitatum, in which he sees study as a way of repressing sexual longing
and the urging of the body. Abelard continues this theme in letter 9,
transmitted separately from his Rule for the Paraclete but quite possibly
its continuation. He draws extensively from the letters of Jerome to en-
courage the nuns of the Paraclete to imitate their spiritual mother, He-
loise, whom he eulogizes as skilled in three languagesLatin, Greek, and
Hebrewlike Jerome.43 In urging them to use study to repress sexual
temptation, he was struggling to quell his own desires.
The Institutiones and Liturgy of the Paraclete
Sometime in the early years of its existence, Bernard of Clairvaux visited

the community for a long-awaited holy visitation and was apparently
welcomed by Heloise and her sisters as if he were an angel.44 Abelard
writes about this in a letter reporting that Bernard had been surprised
about the communitys having changed the wording of the Lords Prayer
by replacing the normal phrase panem quotidianum (daily bread, as in
Luke 11:3) by panem supersubstantialem, Jeromes mistranslation of a rare
Greek word in Matt. 6:11 (epiousios) that also means daily. Abelard
justies his revision on the grounds that Matthews text, which he thought
was originally written in Hebrew, was older and more authentic than that
of Luke.45 In following Hebrew truth, Abelard and Heloise were imi-
tating the practice of Stephen Harding, an early abbot of Cteaux who
consulted Jewish rabbis when supervising a corrected copy of the Latin
Bible. Bernard was less sympathetic to tampering with tradition on the
basis of scholarly knowledge. Abelard responded to Bernards criticism by

reminding him of other liturgical changes that had been made by the
Cistercians, which he knew in such detail that he could have learned
about them while staying at the Paraclete, where Heloise was having to
consider how much to use of the Cistercian liturgy. In many ways, Abelard
and Heloise were simply taking further the zeal of the early Cistercians
for liturgical authenticity, without being constrained by their commitment
to observe the letter of the Rule of Benedict. Abelards commentaries on
the Lords Prayer, the Apostles Creed, and the Athanasian Creed dem-
onstrate his desire to prove his delity to core texts of the Christian
tradition by interpreting them in the light of reason and the Holy Spirit.46
Heloise did not actually implement all the detailed prescriptions that
Abelard laid down in his Rule for the Paraclete. The earliest record of
the actual observances that she established is a short text (the Institutiones
nostrae) appended to Abelards idealized and prolix Rule, drafted in order
to establish uniformity of observance between the Paraclete and a daugh-
ter house, probably that of Trainel, dedicated to Mary Magdalene around
1140. They emphasize that the nuns of the community based their life,
not on the Rule of Benedict, but directly on the example of the early
followers of Christ.47 While most of the rules are short and concise, they
open with a succinctly worded statement that the religious life of the
community is based on three key principles: poverty, humility, and obe-
dience, a subtle revision of Abelards triad of continence, renunciation,
and silence. Chastity is mentioned simply as a consequence of renuncia-
tion: Since we renounce the world and make effort for God, we persist
in the commitment to chastity, and strive to please him according to our
own strength, in proportion to his gift to us.48 Written in the same style
of rhyming prose as Heloises early letters, the comment succinctly crys-
tallizes her theme that one should always respect the limitations of human
nature. It has been discovered that these observances themselves are based
on a simplication of early Cistercian statutes as they stood in the 1130s,
with some signicant changes, such as specifying that they take their way
of life from the teaching of Christ and the apostles and do not mention
the Rule of Benedict. There is also no mention of an external abbot or
a community of monks, only of certain lay brothers who could be sum-
moned for correction by the abbess, the title used in place of Abelards
preferred term, diaconissa. Women of proven age (although not the veiled
nuns) were able to leave the community to conduct necessary business.
Only for a few details, such as mention of mattresses and pillows, have
elements of Abelards Rule been employed. The relative simplicity of the
early Cistercian rules, here pruned back even further, creates a document
that is much easier to follow than Abelards Rule. The liturgy specied
in these observances basically echoes that prescribed by Abelard, with a
good deal of time allowed for nuns to devote themselves to study between
times spent in chapel. Liturgy was clearly an important part of the life of
the community.
The Hymnal of the Paraclete
The comments of Abelard about sending a Psalter in his rst response to

Heloise suggests that she was wanting him to contribute to the Paraclete
liturgy even during the earliest years of the community. By the mid-1130s,
Heloise went even further, in urging Abelard to compose an entire hym-
nal for the Paraclete. In the prologue to its rst book, Abelard quotes at
length from a letter of Heloise in which she says she is troubled by the
lack of clear authority for so many of the hymns sung in the Gallican
Church and the difculty of tting their syllables to a melody. She is
surprised that there are no hymns celebrating the holy innocents, the
evangelists, or women who are neither virgins nor martyrsa valuable
clue to her own interest in Mary Magdalene.49 Her biggest complaint is
that there are many hymns that speak of rising at night or the dawn
rises, even though they are sung at the wrong time, effectively forcing
the singer to engage in a lie. Just as she complained in her second letter
to Abelard that there were many Christians who did not express true
repentance, so she observes that many people sing hymns expressing re-
pentance who do not genuinely feel these sentiments. As all of the hymns
that she criticizes as absurd happen to be included within the relatively
restricted hymnal of Montier-la-Celle in Troyes, it is possible that Abelard
had brought to the Paraclete a copy of this hymnal from St.-Ayoul, where
he once stayed.50 The early Cistercians had themselves initially used this
hymnal, having taken it from Molesmes, but then struck out those they
believed were not composed by St. Ambrose or actually used by St. Ben-
edict.51 Yet while Heloise sympathized with Cistercian anxiety that too
many hymns of uncertain authorship had become widely known, her so-
lution of asking Abelard to compose a new set of hymns was contrary to
Cistercian practice. Her comments about the absence of any hymns in
honor of women who were neither virgins nor martyrs is of particular
interest, given that there were no special Cistercian hymns to Mary Mag-
dalene until the mid-twelfth century. Heloise shared in a popular move-
ment to broaden the image of a female saint away from the monopoly of
virgin, and may even have helped promote devotion to Mary Magdalene
within a monastic order that originally had not preserved any special
hymn in her honor. The overarching theme that Abelard developed in
his hymnal for the Paraclete is that the night hymns celebrate the work
of creation, the day hymns the moral and allegorical signicance of cre-
ation. He thus provides a poetic and musical accompaniment to another
treatise that Heloise requested him to write, perhaps in the mid-1130s
an Expositio on the Hexaemeron, the six days of creation.
Like his Rule for the Paraclete, Abelards hymnal was never fully im-
plemented by Heloise. The surviving liturgical manuscripts of the com-
munity, although from the thirteenth and fteenth centuries, testify that
the nuns drew from an early date on a combination of inuences. One
was an early version of the Cistercian hymnal as it stood prior to reforms
introduced by Bernard of Clairvaux around 1147. Another major source
was the hymnal composed by Abelard. Mixing together such hymns cre-
ated a range of melodies far larger than the two basic melodies that Ab-
elard stipulates are to be used for his hymns. The early Cistercian hymnal
was also extremely limited in its range of tunes, as Stephen Harding had
insisted that they use only tunes they presumed were known to Benedict.
Although the Paraclete integrated all the supposedly Ambrosian hymns
into their repertory, there are suggestions in the surviving manuscripts
that its nuns were familiar with some of the newer melodies that were
allowed into the Cistercian liturgy after the reforms of 1147. The Para-
clete liturgy was not only interesting for the range of inuences it absorbed
but also for its articulation of a distinct theological identity. Whereas
Cistercian monks placed themselves each day under the protection of the
Virgin Mary, perceived as the perfect human soul in her relationship to
the Word of God, the nuns of the Paraclete placed themselves under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This culminated in festivities during the
Octave of Pentecost. Exactly how long it took for Abelard and Heloise
to consolidate a distinctive liturgical identity is impossible to determine
with certainty.
Heloises decision to invite Abelard to contribute to the liturgy of the
Paraclete forced him to explore a new type of writing and to harness his
poetic gifts to new ends. Instead of focusing on the broad theory of Chris-
tian theology, he had to explain how these principles could work out in
practice to an audience not familiar with the core texts of a school cur-
riculum. Also at the request of Heloise, Abelard prepared a book of ser-
mons to be used at the Paraclete, alongside the special prayers and hymns
that he devised. While not in themselves major theological treatises, they
still show how Abelard developed the skill of formulating a theological
argument on the basis of Scripture alone. Without having to argue against
potential critics demanding authority for each point, he was free to engage
with the text of Scripture, above all with the Gospels, in a fresh and
direct way. Not all the surviving sermons of Abelard would have been
composed at the same time. Some, like his lengthy sermon for the feast
of John the Baptist, may have been originally addressed to monks of St.-
Gildas and only subsequently preserved at the Paraclete. Unlike Bernard
of Clairvaux, Abelard is not a great orator in his handling of Scripture.
His approach is more to analyze the theological issues presented by a
Gospel text than to play with the language of Scripture. One of his fa-
vorite themes is the privileged role played by women in the history of
salvation; as their sex is weaker, so their virtue is more pleasing.52
Abelard had written a good deal in his Theologia about the eternal
aspect of the Son of God, but now he has to communicate what is dis-
tinctive about the Sons incarnation as Jesus without drawing on academic
authorities. He emphasizes the theme that Christ draws humanity away
from sin to the love of God. He sees the incarnation as a stained glass
window through which the divine brightness shines, and argues that it is
our blindness that prevents us from perceiving true wisdom.53
The feast of the circumcision of the Lord provokes in Abelard a ques-
tion about why it preceded baptism and what is different in the new
dispensation. His argument is that among the Jews there were both cir-
cumcised and uncircumcised and that they were justied by faith, or
rather by faith through love.54 He recognizes that there is an opinion
that circumcision was instituted to forgive original sin. His own view is
that it is more probable and rational that the reason baptism replaces
circumcision is that baptism applies to both men and women, while cir-
cumcision, he claims, was intended to stop men from having sex with
non-Jewish women. Unlike Hugh of St.-Victor, Abelard does not consider
circumcision to be a sacrament of mystical signicance so much as a way
of restraining Jewish men from indelity. The gospel itself put an end to
the notion that anything was clean or unclean, urging only that we ee
sin.55
Whereas Abelards earlier writing had assumed familiarity with his
reading of Aristotle and Porphyry, his sermons presume no knowledge of
philosophical texts beyond that of Scripture and the occasional passage
from the Fathers. Creating a collection of sermons to cover the major
feasts of the liturgical year obliged him to formulate his ideas about a
variety of topics. He emphasizes a direct reading of the literal or his-
torical meaning of Scripture much more than the allegorical and mystical
interpretation favored by Bernard of Clairvaux. Occasionally he discusses
a rare patristic text, such as homilies on Matthew attributed to Chrysos-
tom but actually written by an Arian author of the fourth or fth cen-
tury.56 He assumes that his reader is capable of following a sophisticated
argument about the wise men that expands into reection on baptism.
While many were baptized with Jesus, the Holy Spirit came down on
Jesus alone. Abelard gives less attention to the outward form of a sacra-
ment than Hugh of St.-Victor, his emphasis always being on the inspi-
ration of the Holy Spirit, without which no sacrament has meaning. He
criticizes those clerics who do not fully appreciate the signicance of Jesus
having been present at the wedding feast at Cana. His point is not that
marriage is a sacrament, but that it is a comfort for the weakness of
married people sanctied by the presence of the Lord.57
In the sermons that he sends to Heloise, Abelard lays the foundation
for the theological arguments that he will develop more systematically in
his commentary on Pauls Epistle to the Romans and in his lectures to
students in Paris during the 1130s. The Easter season provides him with
a particularly rich opportunity to reect on Christs passion and how he
has redeemed us from sin. His technique is to reect rst on the specic
context of the Gospel reading of the day, often commenting on the dif-
ferent ways in which a word might be used. Thus, in relation to Palm
Sunday, he notes that Hosanna is a Hebrew word, misinterpreted by
many as save me, O Lord, though it actually means, according to Je-
rome, We beseech you, Lord, to grant true salvation (healing) in
heaven.58 Christ comes to heal us by inviting the sinner, like Lazarus, to
true repentance. Rather than emphasizing that baptism has washed away
our sins, he argues that Christ continually calls us to repentance of the
heart.59 By their nature, these sermons are public documents that do not
address Heloise directly. Nonetheless, they demonstrate a profound evo-
lution from the moralistic attitude to sin and conversion presented in the
Historia calamitatum to more of an interior emphasis on inner repentance.
In that narrative, Abelard had emphasized trust in the consoling goodness
of God. This theme still underpins the sermons, but he now has to reect
on the complex character of sin as existing in thought, action, custom,
and corruption.60 Without explicitly raising the theme of the purity of
intention, emphasized by Heloise, he recognizes that sin is much more
than simply wrong behavior.
Some of Abelards most evocative writing in the sermons develops the
theme of grief over the suffering of Jesus in the days of his passion, leading
up to his death. And since the historical level arouses the devotion of
the simple more than the mystical, it pleases us to call to mind those
things which the Lord did on those days, according to the letter, conveyed
in all sweetness, rich in full devotion.61 Having theorized about the good-
ness of God manifest in the Paraclete, Abelard dwells on the tragedy of

what happened when this divine goodness was manifest in the person of
Jesus. While preachers frequently dwelt on the suffering of Christ, it was
often to contrast Christs innocence with the sinfulness of humanity. Ab-
elards approach is to evoke sympathy for the historical Jesus by appealing
to the commitment of the holy women who served Christ, were present
at his death, and witnessed the resurrection. Within the allegorical tra-
dition, the female gure who experiences divine revelation most fully is
the Virgin Mary, who receives the Word of God at the annunciation,
witnesses the suffering of Christ, and is rewarded by being physically as-
sumed into heaven. Abelard does not deny that Mary is privileged to
receive the Holy Spirit, but he speaks more about the way the Holy Spirit
has reached out to the other women celebrated in Scripture, above all to
Mary Magdalene, the apostle of the apostles, imagined to be the sister of
Martha, more committed to an active life in the world.
Abelard dwells on the agony of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane,
reminding his audience that St. Ambrose spoke of Christs fear of dying
even though he was the Son of God.62 This homiletic writing exerts its
own power by concentrating more on the historical level of what Jesus
experienced as a human being than on the mystical signicance of the
Word of God entering the soul, in the fashion of Bernard of Clairvaux.
Every stage of the passion narrative provokes reection urging devotion
to Jesus. These are the same themes Abelard had developed in his replies
to Heloise, although here presented for the benet of a wider audience
exhorted to listen to the words of Scripture with understanding of what
they mean for each individual. Abelard does not deny the reality of
Adams sin, inherited from our rst parents, or that we are regenerated
through Christ.63 He differs from Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh of St.-
Victor more in his understanding of the meaning of the punishment
(poena) inherited from Adam and removed by the punishment experi-
enced by Christ. In these sermons, Abelard steers away from explicit dis-
cussion of controversial issues such as whether the devil has a legitimate
right over humanity, but he provides rich description of the sufferings
experienced by Jesus, sufferings just as great as the disasters he had pre-
sented as his own in the Historia calamitatum.
Easter also enables him to reect on how the Lord rst revealed himself
to the women who came to the tomb. In the Paraclete liturgy, a sequence
was sung (Epithalamica) that vividly evokes the intense love that binds
Mary Magdalene to the risen Lord as she seeks him. This is one of a series
of sequences (along with Virgines castae and De profundis) with a strong
claim to have originated at the Paraclete as a composition of either Ab-
elard or Heloise.64 It develops the erotic imagery of the Song of Songs

with unusual intensity:
Per noctem igitur hunc quaerens exeo;
Huc, illuc, anxia quaerendo cursito;
Occurrunt vigiles; ardenti studio,
Quos cum transierim, Sponsum invenio.
Iam video quod optaveram,
Iam teneo quod amaveram;
Iam rideo quae sic everam,
Plus gaudeo quam dolueram:
Risi mane, evi nocte;
Mane risi, nocte evi.
[By night therefore I go out seeking him;
Anxiously, I run here, there, seeking him;
The watchmen are coming; with burning zeal,
When I pass them, I nd the bridegroom.
Now I see what I had hoped for,
Now I clasp what I had loved;
Now I laugh at what I had so wept for,
I rejoice more than I had grieved:
At morn, I laughed, I wept by night;
I laughed at morn, by night I wept.]65
The song of Mary Magdalene recalls similar imagery in one of Heloises

early letters of the Epistolae duorum amantium (84), in which she also
adapts the Song of Songs to evoke her love:
Post mutuam nostre visionis allocucionisque noticiam, tu solus michi pla-
cebas supra omnem dei creaturam, teque solum dilexi, diligendo quesivi,
querendo inveni, inveniendo amavi, amando optavi, optando omnibus in
corde meo preposuit, teque solum elegi ex milibus, ut facerem tecum pignus.
[Ever since we rst met and spoke to each other, only you have pleased me
above all Gods creatures and only you have I loved. Through loving you,
I searched for you; searching for you, I found you; nding you, I desired
you; desiring you, I chose you; choosing you, I placed you before everyone
else in my heart.]66
Is this sequence, sung at the Paraclete, a composition of Heloise rather

than of Abelard? Whatever the case, it is clear that the liturgy, like the
letters they exchanged, constituted a collaborative effort. The devotional
intensity encouraged by Abelard at the Paraclete provides a tting re-
sponse to the ethical questions Heloise wants him to address. Prayers to
the Holy Spirit and sequences about Mary Magdalene seeking her beloved
enable him to deect and transform the emotional intensity that Heloise
brought to recollection of their relationship.
The Planctus
Perhaps the richest poetic achievement resulting from Abelards renewed

contact with Heloise and the Paraclete during the 1130s is the series of
six planctus, or laments, on biblical themes that Abelard wrote for the
community and for Heloise in particular.67 Her fondness for the lament
as a genre is evident even in some of those later poems (69, 82) that she
included in the Epistolae duorum amantium as well as in the short poem
in honor of Vital of Savigny. In her response to the Historia calamitatum,
she persistently reminded Abelard of his skill in verse and melodic com-
position, alongside his talent for philosophy. Even in her earlier letters
(21, 112), she had marvelled at this particular combination of gifts. Con-
fronted by her demand that he renew their literary exchanges to a level
comparable to the intensity of their early relationship, Abelard embarked
on a project of offering her gures in Scripture as models of heroic suf-
fering. The rst of these is Dinah, daughter of Jacob, who had been raped
by Shechem, son of a gentile ruler.68 According to Genesis 34, Jacobs
sons are outraged by the crime and want revenge but come to accept the
union, as Shechem did love her, on the proviso that he and all the men
of his region be circumcised. Dinahs brothers Simeon and Levi nonethe-
less kill Shechem and all the men in revenge for having abused Dinah.
The story provides an eloquent exemplum of a tragic crime, tellingly close
to the experience of Abelard and Heloise. Whereas in the Historia cal-
amitatum Abelard offered his own story as a model of overcoming tragedy,
he now has a biblical model to offer.
The choice of victims in these laments seems to be deliberately struc-
tured to cover a range of tragic situations described in the Bible. The
second planctus transforms the deathbed speech of Jacob (Genesis 49) into
a lament over the crimes of his sons Simeon and Levi and the grief that
will plague Benjamin, his youngest son. Just as the rst lament is about
Dinah losing the man who loved her, so the second is about Jacob grieving
over his sons. In both situations, Heloise could nd much to identify
with.69 The third lament, of the virgins of Israel over the daughter of
Jephthah, is even more pertinent to Heloise. It examines the tragedy of
an only daughter sacriced by her father through a vow to God that he
would sacrice the rst person to come through the door of his house
(Judg. 11:2940). The composition, an imaginative tour de force, reects

on the apparent pointlessness of the sacrice of an innocent for the sake
of a religious vow, more extreme than that of Isaac by Abraham. Rather
than coax a moral meaning out of the tragedy, Abelard turns it into a
tragic lament over the madness of the father and the abuse of a religious
vow. The fourth lament, of Israel over Samson, takes the opposing situ-
ation of a great man brought down through the wiles of a woman (Judges
16). Again, there is great personal relevance to the image, since Heloise
had herself used the episode to talk about their situation.70 Inherent in
the story is a misogynist theme of a great man brought low by a woman.
The driving message is that the judgments of God are deep and to be
feared, whether it is an innocent woman like Jephthahs daughter or a
heroic man like Samson who is struck down.
The fth lament expresses the grief of David for Abner, the bold and
virtuous general, once Davids friend, but (according to 2 Samuel 3) trag-
ically murdered by Joab (tellingly, attacked in the groin).71 While we can
certainly read the lament as an extended reection on his own experience,
Abelards broader message is that this murder is not Gods will but is a
great crime that calls out for justice. In his letters to Heloise, he had
asked that she consider not his own suffering but that of Jesus. Here he
offers her from the treasury of Scripture other examples of people who
have suffered. The nal lament, of David over Jonathan, son of Saul,
completes this cycle of poetic reection on the suffering of a noble victim.
In 2 Samuel 1, the Bible presents the lament of David over both Saul
and Sauls son, Jonathan, whom he loved like his own soul (1 Sam. 18:
1). The lament allows Abelard an opportunity, not present in the story
of Abner, to reect on the paradox that such great love could turn to
tragedy and on the feelings of guilt that this could provoke. The music
for this lament, the only one that survives in pitched notation, gives us
some clue to Abelards great melodic genius, coupled with an ability to
make tightly controlled poetic verse come alive in its presentation. While
Abelard never wrote a commentary on books of the Old Testament, these
laments constitute an astonishingly personal response to some of the great
stories that they tell about the human situation.
Whether it was Heloise herself who rst suggested these biblical epi-
sodes is not known. It is noteworthy, however, that apart from the early
foray into commentary on Ezekiel, Abelard steered away from biblical
exegesis, at least during the 1120s. He preferred to deal with examples
from the philosophers. By contrast, Heloise, whom he celebrates for her
knowledge of Hebrew, seems always to have had a close interest in the
Bible. In the Epistolae duorum amantium, she betrays great familiarity with
Scripture when, in letter 27, she counters a particularly erotic message

with a cryptic note, sending her lover the spirit of Bezalel, the strength
of the three locks of hair, the beauty of the father of peace, the depth of
Ididia.72 In those love letters, he was not very interested in picking up
images from Scripture, and preferred to compose songs and melodies that
celebrated love rather than wisdom and courage. As Ruys argues, these
laments open up a new way of communication with Heloise, who was
always concerned with issues of human experience. Her Problemata, writ-
ten perhaps in the later 1130s (although before the Scito teipsum) show
that she is fascinated by issues of sin, guilt, and suffering in often quite
obscure biblical passages. Abelard singles out her knowledge of Hebrew
as much as of Latin and Greek, effectively attributing to her the same
linguistic competency as traditionally assigned to Jerome.73 As so often
with Heloise, her contribution to these poetic laments is concealed. They
may best be seen as collaborative productions rather than as the work of
one or other individual. There may also be other poems that Abelard
composed, such as one in the shape of a wheel, attributed to him in a
manuscript. In all such cases, questions of authenticity abound.74
We have no record of the homilies that Heloise delivered in the chap-
ter house to the nuns and brothers living at her community. Because so
much of the written record is identied as Abelards, her own literary
output, celebrated by Hugh Metel and Peter the Venerable, has fallen
into a dark shadow. Just as we can never fully know the exact contribution
of Heloise to the vast body of anonymous secular Latin lyrics, such as
preserved in the Carmina burana, so we will never be sure how much she
contributed to the even larger body of anonymous religious verse and
drama from the period. Heloise did not present herself to her contem-
poraries as an author in the manner of Marie de France or Hildegard of
Bingen. We have the comment of Hugh Metel that she did win renown
as a writer: Your reputation, ying through the void, has resounded to
us; what is worthy of resounding from you, has made an impression on
us. It has informed us that you have surpassed the female sex. How? By
composing, by versifying, by renewing familiar words in a new combina-
tion, and what is more excellent than everything, you have overcome
womanly weakness and have hardened in manly strength.75 Much more
research is needed into the large corpus of anonymous Latin literature
from the period. It is clear, however, that Heloise was revered by contem-
poraries for her wisdom and learning. Romantic images of Heloise as nar-
rowly xated on her love for Abelard and out of sorts with the religious
structures in which she spent most of her life misunderstand the breadth
and character of her intellectual curiosity and literary genius. Her abiding
intellectual interest was with the question of what constituted truly eth-
ical behavior. Abelard was always a great master of language, whether
philosophical, poetic, or theological, but he always considered Heloise to
be much more the person who lived out her ethical ideals. Her dilemma
was that she became the prisoner of his zeal. When Abelard composed
his Historia calamitatum in 1132/33, he wanted his readers, perhaps above
all Heloise, to think of the consoling goodness of the Holy Spirit as
superior to any worldly love. Heloise was not satised that such a theology
in itself could offer her true consolation. In writing for the Paraclete,
Abelard started to develop new ideas and interests, prompted by the in-
sistent questioning of Heloise.
9
Ethics, Sin, and Redemption
L ike many of their contemporaries, Abelard and Heloise both lamented

the hypocrisy of prominent gures who in public preached ideals of
love for God and neighbor, while being more concerned in practice to
obtain the support of the powerful than to help those in genuine distress.
Heloise was more diplomatic than Abelard in the way she articulated
these concerns and negotiated her relationships. She was not as prone to
make broad assertions about specic individuals whom he accused of using
religious ideals to promote their careers. One such target of Abelards
satire was William of Champeaux, even though he learned a great deal
from William about the principles of argument. By extension, Abelard
charged many of Williams admirers with intellectual blindness and failure
to live out the ethical principles of love and compassion that they
preached. His critique was certainly colored by the way he felt he had
been mistreated by the ecclesiastical establishment. When he rst met
Heloise, Abelard was overwhelmed by a sense that she lived out her ideals
of a truly ethical life, which she saw as the true teaching not just of
Scripture but of both Cicero in his writing on friendship and Ovid in his
poetry about love. Abelard, brilliant in analyzing words, was fascinated
by her concern with ethical principles and attempted to respond to her
early questions about love, but he still remained then a specialist in di-
alectic. Even from relatively early in their exchange, Heloise is stronger
in her sense of the demands of love as an ideal to be pursued for its own
sake and not for any external gain. Whereas he sees love as something
174
ethics, sin, and redemption 175
that they share, she holds to an ideal of pure love that combines passion-
ate longing (amor) with seless love (dilectio) and friendship (amicitia), an
ideal difcult to manifest in practice.
While there was much discussion at the time in monastic circles about
the nature of love, as evident from the writings of William of St.-Thierry
and Bernard of Clairvaux, the emphasis here tended to be on divine love
and the divine grace that made it possible for fallen humanity to perceive
this transcendent love. Abelard, by contrast, prefers to emphasize the
natural capacity of the educated person to understand the nature of love.
He is not comfortable with Augustines explanation, much emphasized by
his teachers, that lust is a consequence of original sin and that only
through the grace of Christ, mediated through the sacraments, can we be
reformed in the image of God. He takes for granted that lust is wrong,
but prefers to argue that we should be motivated by love of virtue rather
than by desire to escape the bonds of sin. His early ideas about ethics,
as formulated in the second book of the Theologia Christiana, were rela-
tively sketchy and not as fully worked out as his ideas about theology. He
did recognize, however, that ethics is the highest grade of philosophy.1
While he outlined in that work some key ideas about natural law as the
foundation of all morality and assumed that all philosophers accept
the immortality of the soul and its reward or punishment according to
human merit, he was summarizing what he understood to be the essential
features of Socratic ethics from comments made by Augustine, Jerome,
Plato, and Macrobius rather than developing a coherent ethical system.
In a brief dialogue called Soliloquium, he had Petrus and Abaelardus
debate the common ground between philosophical and religious paths to
truth, and concluded that philosophers often surpass Christians in the
quality of their lives, but his concerns were still more theoretical than
ethical.2
The Collationes
Not the least of the many enigmas that surround the Collationes is great
uncertainty about its date of composition. The Collationes (or Dialogus,
according to the scribe of one manuscript) is signicantly more developed
than the Theologia Christiana in its comparison of philosophical and Chris-
tian understandings of the ethical life. Whereas in the Theologia Christiana
Abelard placed great attention on authoritative testimonies, in the Col-
lationes he provides only occasional allusion to the Fathers of the Church
or the fourfold classication of the virtues of Plotinus as reported by Ma-
crobius.3 He quotes only a single passage from Platos Timaeus, itself lifted
from the Theologia Christiana.4 The gure whom he reveres as a teacher
of ethics is Cicero, whose De inventione he once described as a treatise
of ethics. Abelard is now also more familiar with the writing of Seneca.5
Abelards emphasis is not on confronting his monastic and academic crit-
ics but on inviting a sympathetic reader to consider rationally the com-
mon ground of ethics and theology, the supreme good for humanity, from
a philosophical perspective.
The second of the two dialogues closes with the Christians reection
on the meaning of good. The Christian concludes, Unless I am mis-
taken, what I have said just now is enough to show how good should be
understood when it is taken without qualication to mean a good thing
and also when it is applied to the happening of things or what are said
by statements. Since this derived from our investigation in the highest
good, if there is anything more which you think is to be asked about it,
please add it, or hurry on to what remains.6 This open-ended conclusion
does not mean that Abelard ever intended to take it further. The two
dialogues that constitute the Collationes make more sense as occupying a
key moment in the evolution of Abelards thought, bringing together his
interest in dialectic, theology, and ethics. While informed by Abelards
interest in the meaning of words and propositions, it lays the foundations
for ethical concerns examined in more detail in the Scito teipsum. Mar-
enbon suggests that the most likely time for its composition is the period
at St.-Gildas, that is, between 1127 and about 1132.7 Certainly this ts
in with a comment Abelard makes in the Historia calamitatum that toward
the end of his early years at the Paraclete he was plunged into such despair
by criticism from other Christians that he thought he could live more
happily among the enemies of Christ, in other words, under Muslim
rule in Spain.8 While he does not model the philosopher on any specic
Muslim, he nurtured the idealized image of there being greater intellectual
tolerance in a Muslim culture than in Christendom.
The condent tone of the Collationes suggests that a date in the early
1130s may be more likely than those difcult early years at St.-Gildas. It
begins with a preface in which he describes how in a vision he came
across a Jew, a Christian, and a philosopher, all of whom were engaged
in discussion about the different ways they claimed to worship the one
God. The philosopher was content with natural law and the study of
moral philosophy, while the Jew and the Christian both relied on Scrip-
ture for their knowledge of God. The philosopher calls on Abelard to
adjudicate their debate, since he has demonstrated capacity in both phi-
losophy and sacred doctrine in the Theologia: Envy could not put up with
such a book, but it has not managed to dispose of it; rather, the more it
has persecuted it, the more he has covered it with glory (an allusion to
Exod. 14:4, about the Israelites being persecuted by the Egyptians but
provoking the Lord to reveal his glory). Abelard replies by saying that he
would rather listen to their arguments, as this is the path of true wisdom.
While he is not specic about which version of the Theologia is being
referred to, he refers elsewhere to the second book of his Theologia Chris-
tiana as providing both reasoning and authority against those who deny
that faith should be investigated by reasoning.9 A series of passages from
Augustine about the goodness of the world seems to have been lifted from
Theologia Christiana rather than the Theologia Scholarium, suggesting that
he had not yet prepared the latter revision.10 Because Abelard refers back
to the Collationes in his commentary on the Hexaemeron, addressed to
Heloise sometime in the 1130s, he may have expected her to be familiar
with its discussions of good and evil.11
Abelard certainly wrote the Collationes for a more educated audience
than the monks of St.-Gildas. The fact that it is preserved in one man-
uscript alongside the Sic et non (in its penultimate recension) suggests
that he intended it to function as a basis for serious discussion, rather like
the Sic et non. The rst of its two dialogues, between a philosopher and
a Jew, explores in greater depth questions about Jewish law that Abelard
touches on in a less academic fashion in some of his sermons. While there
was an established genre of inventing dialogues between a Jew and a
Christian, it was much less common to privilege the role of a philosopher
in such debates. Abelard is also unusually sympathetic in reporting the
burdens under which the Jew labors in a hostile society and in arguing
that Jewish respect for the law is based on fearing God rather than on
excessive legalism. There may be an evolution here from his earlier atti-
tude of hostility to Jewish narrowness in the Theologia Christiana.12 The
philosopher, by contrast, makes the case that the works of faith do not
matter as much as the intention behind them, which is the same position
Heloise argues so strongly for in her third letter to Abelard about the
relationship between outward observance and inner disposition. The phi-
losophers argument is also very similar to that which Abelard puts forward
in his sermon on circumcision about there having been virtuous gures
in the Old Testament who did not themselves carry out all the obser-
vances of the law.
Although the argument is couched in terms of observance of the law,
there is a wider issue under debate, namely, the relationship between outer
duty and inner intention. Written law may have its place, but, as the
philosopher argues, natural law can sufce for salvation.13 The philosopher
emerges as an interpreter of Jewish law, and he reminds the Jew of the

example of both Abraham and Job, the virtuous pagan. Abelard had al-
ready anticipated these themes in the Theologia Christiana, of how Jews
and non-Jews can respect the Word of God, but without the detailed
discussion of how the Jews live out their faith in practice. He distances
himself from the reection that Hugh of St.-Victor offered on the sacra-
ments, anticipated in the Old Testament as the medium through which
sanctication can begin. The philosopher repeats a comment of Ovid that
Abelard had reported in the Theologia Christiana, that we always desire
what is forbidden and wish for what we are denied.14 Ovid understood
as much as Paul that creating a legal prohibition could easily encourage
occasion for sin. Abelard does not dissect the character of sin in any depth
here. Rather, his concern is with the character of religious observance,
which might often (as in the case of circumcision) have a practical func-
tion, namely, to encourage friendship and fellowship among the Jews.15
Again, these are thoughts developed more concisely in his sermons. Here
the strands of argument are separated out, with some elements developed
by the Jew and others by the philosopher. Rather than engage in a com-
mentary on the books of the Old Testament, Abelard uses this dialogue
as a way of singling out the key issues involved in any debate on Jewish
tradition. Its implications are as much theological as ethical. The dialogue
provides a way of nding a deeper reason behind the precepts found in
Scripture, but one that is compatible with philosophical enquiry.
The Jew enables Abelard to expound what he understands by the pun-
ishment inicted on Adam and Eve. In some ways, the exposition attrib-
uted to the Jew is in continuity with the teaching of Anselm of Laon and
William of Champeaux, namely, that man is punished in his genitals (by
circumcision) for the sin of intercourse, a sin for which he was thrown
out of paradise. The woman was punished by the labor of childbirth for
the pleasure taken in the evil desire she had when the child was con-
ceived, and she also pays the penalty that was due to her because of her
sinning.16 Abelards argument in the Collationes that suffering is a pun-
ishment for wrongdoing is fully of a piece with what he maintains in the
Historia calamitatum. In neither work does he question whether sexual
intercourse is sinful, an issue of great concern to Heloise and which he
discussed in much more detail in the Scito teipsum.
The goal of the law, as expounded by the Jew, is the perfect love of
God and neighborthe same goal, we are told, as that of the natural
philosopher. Abelards dialogue is not so much a comparison of two re-
ligious traditions as an interpretation of the true meaning of Jewish Scrip-
ture, offered through the insights of both the Jew and the philosopher.
Religious observance was enjoined on the Jews to help them not be cor-
rupted by unbelievers, but its true goal is simply the development of the
love of God and of ones neighbor, in which true virtue consists.17 The
philosophers criticism of the Jewish claim that circumcision is enjoined
on those excluded from the law highlights Abelards sense of the limita-
tions of any religious observance. The decisive argument in this rst di-
alogue is given to the philosopher, who argues (by quoting Scripture) that
God longs more for the sacrice of a contrite heart than for external
religious observance. His argument that what the law calls unclean,
whether it be the nocturnal emission of semen by a man or a womans
menstrual ow, has nothing to do with impurities of the soul, which we
properly call sins. This recalls Heloises own critique of the relationship
between religious observance and the ethics of the inner person. Abelard
uses the philosopher to develop the argument that guilt is brought about
by true contrition of heart, so that the guilt of a perverse will, through
which someone sins, is remitted. Whether this is presented as a legiti-
mate Christian position is left for the reader to consider. The philosophers
argument, however, that true penitence will remove the risk of future
punishment (and thus the risk of purgatory) is one that the Christian
takes further in the second dialogue and that Abelard himself alludes to
in his commentary on Romans. What Abelard has to say through the
voice of both the Jew and the philosopher is very close to what he has
to say in his sermons to the nuns of the Paraclete. Many of the philos-
ophers arguments parallel those of Heloise, who was both interested in
Jewish tradition but critical of narrow legalism. In the Collationes, Abelard
discusses issues about sin and virtue that are of concern to Heloise but
without engaging in her situation at a personal level.
The second dialogue, between a philosopher and a Christian, similarly
provides an opportunity for Abelard to identify the most signicant in-
sights offered by each tradition. As the Christian puts it, [W]e are ad-
vancing to the end and completion of all disciplines, which you custom-
arily call ethics, that is, morals, but which we commonly call divinity;
we call it that from that which is held to be understood, namely, God,
while you call it from that through which it is reached, that is, good
behavior, which you call virtues.18 While Augustine had contrasted the
philosophers knowledge of ethics with the Christians reverence for God
himself, Abelard was arguing that there was a profound connection be-
tween ethics and divinity. He did so in a way that went further than
anything he had said in the Theologia Christiana, in which he suggested
only that some pagans were more profound in their lives and ethical
teaching than some Christians. Abelard uses the gure of the philosopher
to suggest that ethics is the highest part of philosophy, far beyond gram-
mar, dialectic, or other disciplines.19 When he wrote the Dialectica, he
had suggested that dialectic was the ruler of other philosophical disci-
plines. Now he feels that ethica must command the attention of his stu-
dents if they are to understand its relationship to theologia. In the Theologia
Christiana, his main technique was to use his skill in logica to examine
the character of supreme good as understood by Christians. Even at the
time of writing the Collationes he may have been thinking about an Ethica
that would be comparable to the Theologia as a treatise. Formulating the
arguments of a philosopher and a Christian helped him reach this goal,
while also indirectly responding to Heloise.
The second section of the Collationes also helps him to rene his dis-
cussion of the relationship between reasoning and faith, by asserting the
superiority of arguments based on reason. The philosopher draws from a
few passages of Augustine about dialectic as he quotes them in the Theo-
logia Christiana to explain how understanding is always deepened by dis-
cussing arguments that had been put forward.20 In the Theologia Schola-
rium, Abelard amplies his citation of the same passage of Augustines
De doctrina Christiana that he had misquoted in the Theologia Summi
boni (where he erroneously reported Augustine as saying that dialectic
was good for discussing rather than for dissolving). The Christian ac-
knowledges that if he is to discuss faith with a philosopher, he needs to
adopt a different technique from when debating with other Christians.21
By using philosophical perspectives, Abelard explains why he wishes to
move beyond his technique in the Theologia Christiana of relying as much
on authority as on reason.
In the Theologia Christiana, Abelard had given little attention to phi-
losophers internal differences apart from a few brief comments that the
Peripatetics had dissolved heretical opinions of both Stoics and Epicure-
ans about providence and free will. In this, he relied largely on the neg-
ative judgments of Jerome, who had written against Jovinian, that Epi-
curean heretic.22 In the Collationes, the philosopher rejects the popular
image of Epicurus as elevating pleasure for its own sake and criticizes those
who ignorantly attribute [this argument] to Epicurus and his followers,
the Epicureans, because they do not understand what it is, as I explained,
which they call pleasure [voluptas]. Why else would Seneca, that greatest
teacher of morals, of most continent life, as you yourself acknowledge,
give such weight to his teaching?23 Abelard had never quoted Senecas
Letters to Lucilius in the Theologia Christiana, although he would single
Seneca out for praise as a teacher of ethics in both his Rule for the
Paraclete and the Theologia Scholarium.24 The arguments of the philos-
opher echo those of Heloise, who was particularly fond of Seneca.25 Ab-
elards understanding of Epicurus is still, by modern standards, rudimen-
tary. He thinks, for example, that Epicurean understanding of pleasure is
fundamentally the same as Stoic notions of virtue, dened as good will,
made rm by a settled state, and that philosophers all value the life to
come. Abelards broader intention, however, is not so much to study in-
dividual philosophers as to convey the idea that what Epicureans see as
a life detached from suffering is a life lived in accord with virtue.
This rehabilitation of a philosophical position traditionally scorned by
the Fathers of the Church leads the Christian to claim that what Epicurus
calls pleasure is the same thing as what Christians call the kingdom of
heaven. The philosophical ideal is of something that is worthy to be
desired for itself and not because of anything else. This is the position of
Cicero in his De inventione and is also the same principle that Heloise
insists is the basis of her love for Abelard. Abelard then uses the Christian
to identify a weakness in the Stoic argument, here conated with that of
Epicurus, namely, that it does not allow for any grades of happiness. Some-
one is either virtuous or not, and the good are therefore equal in virtue.
Through the discussion that follows, Abelard teases out a central theme
of his thinking about what constitutes a truly ethical life, namely, the
relationship between pagan ideals of virtue and Christian teaching about
the ideal of love. Commenting on the same passages from Ciceros De
ofciis and Augustines discussion of the Stoics in one of his letters as he
had used to introduce debate about love in the Sic et non, Abelard dissects
the relationship between pagan virtue on one hand and Christian teach-
ing about love on the other by having his two protagonists debate the
issue.26
The key insight Abelard has the Christian put forward, on the au-
thority of both Augustine and Paul, is that caritas embraces all the vir-
tues.27 Inevitably individuals differ greatly in the extent to which they are
shaped by charity. The Christian chides the philosopher for remaining
too committed to assuming that virtue is either present or not present in
an individual. Abelard has the Christian use dialectic to identify a weak-
ness in the Stoic argument, namely, failure to distinguish the general
category of a good man from a specic good man, who may not be as
good as someone else. The fact that charity is the foundation of the
virtues does not mean it is equal in everyone.
The conversation then tends to the supreme good for humanity and
the next life, which the philosopher, drawing on a familiar distinction of
Seneca, suggests has a threefold character, corresponding to three nal
conditions of humanity: good, bad, and indifferent, or a state in which
no virtues or merits have developed.28 Abelard then has the philosopher

draw on Aristotles denition of virtue as the best settled state of the
mind [habitus animi] to explain that it is not a natural state but something
acquired. Abelard knew from Boethius that Aristotle differed in this from
the denition of Socrates that virtue was a kind of knowledge.29 Natural
chastity, based on frigidity or coldness of the body, is thus not a virtue,
because it does not win triumph over desire. Where there is no conict
against something to be fought, there is no victors crown of virtue. A
similar issue surfaces when Heloise insists at the end of her second letter
that Abelard should not exhort her to virtue and aim for a victors crown:
I do not seek a crown of victory; it is sufcient for me to avoid danger.30
Abelard does not accept this, and insists that her struggle will lead to an
eternal reward; as he had been made forcibly chaste, he no longer has to
struggle to achieve virtue in this respect. While the philosopher and the
Christian in the Collationes agree that virtue has to be a disposition based
on effort, the philosopher emphasizes that it has to be pursued as an end
in itself, effectively very close to the position of Heloise.
In the last section of the Collationes, the philosopher presents his un-
derstanding of the virtues, while the Christian considers the denition of
what constitutes supreme good and supreme evil for humanity. The reader
is invited to see these positions not so much opposed as mutually com-
plementary, in exactly the same way as the Sic et non presents contrasting
perspectives on many other issues. Extending and slightly modifying clas-
sications of the virtues attributed to Socrates and Cicero, the philosopher
considers prudence not so much as a virtue in itself as the capacity to
distinguish between good and evil, and thus the source or mother of the
virtues, notably justice (justitia, sometimes translated as righteousness),
courage, and temperance or self-restraint.31 The discussion is much more
focused around virtue than vice; the latter concept is examined more fully
in the Scito teipsum. The philosopher speaks of vice both abstractly as the
opposite of a virtue (injustice, weakness, intemperance, etc.) and as weak-
ness of the mind to resist those vices. He singles out as a virtue intem-
perance or lack of self-restraint, which loosens us to give way to dis-
gusting pleasures and shameful desires.32 There is the same tendency to
identify vice with sin, as in Abelards response to the protestation of
Heloise that even during mass she cannot resist carnal thoughts. While
the philosopher is not particularly concerned here with the denition of
sin, he assumes (as in the previous dialogue with the Jew), that sin is a
perverse or wrong will that needs to be replaced by a good or right will
(bona voluntas), leading to right action.33 For those who have a right
will, God offers the assistance of his grace. Virtue lies in constancy of the
will. This moralism leads Abelard to have the philosopher say that since
God arranges all things to the good, submitting to sorrow is more a weak-
ness than a virtue. How can it be right to mourn something ordained by
God?34 This is the same message that Abelard develops in response to He-
loises claim that she cannot forgive God for what happened to them both.
Developing a distinction made by Chalcidius between natural and pos-
itive justice as that between universal justice and that found in human
community, Abelard has the philosopher argue that all human laws, in-
cluding precepts such as circumcision and baptism, belong to positive
justice. This enables him to connect to his argument in the dialogue with
the Jew that laws have a social function rather than an immutable char-
acter of divine origin. Abelard raises the issue that all law that derives
from positive justice, whether ecclesiastical or civil, has a human rather
than a natural origin, but he does not explore in depth whether specic
procedures belonging to positive justice, such as trial by combat or ordeal,
are better or worse than a system of relying on oath and discussion by
witnesses to settle a dispute. He comments in passing that we have to
submit to whatever system of justice prevails in our region.35
The second half of the dialogue between the philosopher and the
Christian is a long comparison of their views on the highest good and
the greatest evil for humanity, what Christians call heaven and hell. If
the Collationes is read simply for its analysis of ethical questions, its long
discussion about eternal punishment might seem to be a distraction,
driven more by Christian concerns about the afterlife than by strictly
ethical questions. Abelards concern is as much about theodicy as ethics.
His analysis of the question, presented through arguments put by both
protagonists, hinges around discussion of the different ways in which the
words good and bad are used. Applying a familiar theme in his logic
to both ethics and theology, he concludes that a torment or punishment
may be a bad thing in itself, even though it may be good or just for a
person to be aficted in some way. This is a philosophical way of explain-
ing what Abelard argues in more specic terms in the Historia calamitatum
and the subsequent letters to Heloise: that the difculties we experience
in this life may be bad and unjust in themselves, but they still have a
place in the working out of providence. Both the philosopher and the
Christian accept that the soul is immortal and that there are eternal
consequences for both virtue and fault (culpa) for which there has been
no true repentance. They differ, however, in how they look at suffering
in this world. The philosopher considers that suffering is the greatest evil
for humanity, both in this world and in the life to come, as opposed to
that supreme tranquility, identied, so he claims, as true pleasure (volup-
tas) by Epicurus and as the kingdom of heaven by Christians.36 The Chris-

tian has no difculty with this argument, but cannot accept that suffering,
whether here or in the next world, is in itself unjust, as it may still be
just for someone to be punished. He maintains that the greatest good is
not simply tranquility or freedom from torment, but supreme love (summa
dilectio) for God, just as its opposite is complete hate for God.37 This leads
Abelard, using the voice of the Christian, to argue that purgation occurs
not in the life to come, but in this life. Just as the Christian had ques-
tioned Stoic teaching about virtues and vices being equal in themselves
by maintaining that the only true virtue is love, so in the life to come,
true happiness comes with true love for God.
The Christian does not hold that the soul experiences further purga-
tion after death, but rather thinks that suffering in this world, most ex-
treme at the moment of death, is sufcient to prepare someone for an
eternal reward.38 Abelard anticipates this position in the Sic et non by
quoting patristic texts that consider whether God punishes the same sin
both in this world and in the next. These passages from Origen, Jerome,
and Gregory the Great, none of which had been culled from Ivos Decre-
tum, give the impression of supporting the idea that God does not punish
the same sin twice, but that death itself is the supreme purgation for sin.
Augustine, not quoted at all in this part of the Sic et non, did hold that
souls could experience purgatorial re as an extension of arguing that
Gods mercy extended to sinners even beyond the grave. While the idea
that prayers for the dead could be efcacious in freeing otherwise unwor-
thy souls from torment became a common theme of Christian preachers,
the notion that purgatory was a place rather than a state of the soul only
became clearly articulated in the second half of the twelfth century. In
his De sacramentis (written in the 1130s), Hugh of St.-Victor contents
himself with quoting Augustines inuential discussion of the subject
within the De civitate Dei.39 Bernard of Clairvaux drew on this line of
Christian thought to attack as heretical Christians who rejected the no-
tion of purgatorial re and the idea that praying for the dead (a major
role of monastic communities) had a particular efcacy.40 Abelards posi-
tion emphasizes that any eternal reward or punishment is only a conse-
quence of how one lives in this world and is thus not dependent on
someone elses prayers. He prefers to say that some people will have a
greater reward in heaven, as their love is more pure, than that others will
experience purgation prior to sharing in the vision of God.41 The love
(dilectio) that Abelard insists lies at the heart of the vision of God is
beyond any category but rather transforms the human soul, unless it con-
sciously rejects God. Hell, like heaven, cannot be described by using a
temporal category of place, as God is a spiritual presence, present every-

where through his potency, and not a physical substance.42
The discussion of the supreme good in this nal part of the Collationes,
put into the mouth of the Christian, is a profound meditation on the goal
of human longing that is intended to complement what the philosopher
has to say about the virtues, the path that any rational soul has to take
toward the supreme good, whether it is described as tranquility, pleasure
in the Epicurean sense, or the kingdom of heaven. While the philosopher
is puzzled by Christian claims about heaven as a place, the Christian
develops a more intelligent theological discourse which considers that
God is present everywhere through his potency rather than through his
substance. Is this Abelard speaking to Heloise? The Christian Scriptures
use metaphor to talk of God, and should not be interpreted literally. Just
as in the rst dialogue the philosopher contextualizes the precepts of the
law, so in this second dialogue the Christian interprets his tradition in a
way that takes into account the questions of the philosopher. The Chris-
tian acknowledges that there are many popular descriptions of hell as a
place of re and worms, but he insists that these cannot be taken literally.
He cannot accept the common view that in the same re some people
are tortured more than others.43 This leads him to conclude that the most
extreme suffering of the soul is in death, and that it is so great that all
fault is remitted (the position of Jerome and Gregory the Great, docu-
mented in the Sic et non). All analysis of these questions must respect the
way the words good and bad or indifferent are used.44 This meaning
of indifferens as ethically neutral, drawn from Seneca, is not the same
as the Boethian sense of two individuals not being different. Extending
the same principle as Heloise and Abelard had raised in connection to
the use of food and drink in religious life, Abelard has the Christian and
the philosopher agree that actions are deemed good or bad not in them-
selves but according to the root of intention. This principle then leads
the Christian to make a larger point, that Abelard also develops in his
preaching and in his correspondence to Heloise: Who cannot see that
often people recover from the great damage brought about by sinning
stronger and better than before, as a result of their humility and peni-
tence?45 Abelard develops the theme that something that might in one
context be called bad could in another context be good. Even the devil
himself might be said to cooperate with God. Abelards theoretical dis-
cussion provides the underpinning for the theological tension that runs
through the Historia calamitatum, namely, that somebody who is driven
by envy or greed can be an instrument of divine providence. Nothing
happens that God does not allow to happen.
In this long discussion on the nature of the supreme good and the
supreme evil that concludes the Collationes, Abelard attempts to address
the deepest problem of any theodicy, namely, how evil and suffering can
coexist with a good God who foresees all things. His solution is to argue
that we must be aware of the different ways in which we use the words
good and bad. His exposition, although philosophically argued, is
based on idealistic assumptions about a supremely rational divine order
that penetrates existence, accepted by the Jew, the Christian, and the
philosopher. Abelard argues against the view that human suffering is
pointless. Rather, the virtuous life is a matter of the will. What matters
is that we pursue not our own selsh wills, but Gods will. The Collationes
concludes with the same reection as the Historia calamitatum, that we
need to understand the message of the Lords prayer, Thy will be done.
Abelard uses the work to articulate the theological principles that un-
derpin both the Historia calamitatum and his various homiletic writings
for Heloise and the Paraclete. It seems probable that he composed the
Collationes in the early 1130s, either about the same time as or only a
little after these writings for the Paraclete. Its two dialogues provide a
springboard for Abelard to raise ideas that he develops further in his
commentary on Romans, in the Theologia Scholarium, and then later in
his Ethica, or Scito teipsum. At one level the Collationes is unnished. The
Christian has presented his understanding of the supreme good in answer
to the philosopher, but has not really discussed how we are to arrive at
that supreme good. As if aware that there is much more to discuss, Ab-
elard has the Christian conclude, if there is anything more which you
think is to be asked about it [the highest good], please add it, or hurry
on to what remains.46 This ending is designed to encourage his reader to
reect on questions rather than to impose a xed resolution to the debate.
To take up the issue of how the Christian arrives at the supreme good
would demand examining the question of Christs incarnation and re-
demption of humanity. Addressing these questions would demand a major
new treatise.
The Commentaria on Pauls Epistle

to the Romans
In Christian tradition, the Epistle to the Romans has always occupied a

privileged place as a classic exposition of how Gods saving power has
been revealed to both Jews and Gentiles alike in the person of Christ,
thus freeing us from the chain of sin and bondage to a written law and
calling us instead to the obedience of faith. It was essential for any the-
ologian in the twelfth century to prove his competence by commenting
on the Pauline Epistles. While Abelard had already drawn on the au-
thority of Paul in the Theologia Christiana (far more so than in his original
treatise on the Trinity), he seems to have waited until the early 1130s
before producing a commentary on Romans that is much wider in scope
than the glosses attributed to Anselm of Laon. References in the com-
mentary to his Theologia show that he had already begun to transform the
sprawling Theologia Christiana into the more tightly argued Theologia
Scholarium, although he may not have done more than simply plan its
structure. Abelard saw the Commentaria and the Theologia as parallel trea-
tises, one concerned with redemption, the other with the supreme good.
Abelard uses the commentary not just to explicate the Epistle to the
Romans but to deal with the issue left in abeyance in the Collationes,
namely, how humanity can reach the supreme good through the incar-
nation of the Son of God in Christ. Abelard had previously concentrated
on only one aspect of Pauline teaching in Romans: that the invisible
nature of God had been revealed to all humanity through his creation.
Embarking on a full-scale commentary enables Abelard to uncover what
he considers to be the true teaching of Paul without necessarily accepting
the views of Augustine. Where he once sought to uncover the teaching
of Aristotle by distancing himself from specic interpretations of Boethius,
he now turns his attention to Paul.
In his opening prologue, Abelard implements the exegetical principles
that he had already formulated in the Sic et non. He is concerned with
the intention behind the Epistle, as indeed behind the Gospels as a whole.
Scripture is written in a rhetorical mode so as to both teach and encourage
us to do good, and to warn us against evil.47 While the gospel is in itself
complete, the Epistle helps build up the community of Roman Christians
in the same way Cicero had taught in the De inventione that certain things
are essential for a citys well-being, whereas others are helpful for its im-
provement.48 The intention of this particular Epistle is to repress the pride
of the Romans. Abelard takes care to buttress his argument by citing the
major authorities who had commented on Paul in the past, above all
Origen (as translated by Runus) and Jerome. He also draws on a refer-
ence of Jerome to a purported exchange between Paul and Seneca to
support the theme that not all the philosophers whom Paul confronted
were mired in vice. Throughout the commentary, Abelard emphasizes the
natural capacity of men of reason to grasp Gods self-revelation.
Even though Augustine never wrote a commentary on Romans, Latin
Christian thought had been dominated by his interpretation of Pauls
teaching that all men had sinned in Adam and that only through grace
could they be redeemed. Abelard does not deny the reality of sin, but
emphasizes that the true justice or righteousness of God is concerned more
with intention than with outward duties. Repeating his argument in the
Theologia about the Invisibilia Dei (Rom. 1:20) as attributes of the divine
nature revealed to the pagans, he explains that although Paul was referring
to those who had abandoned themselves to unnatural practices, this was
not true of all philosophers or all those, like Job, who followed natural
law. The Pauline contrast between being justied by faith rather than by
works provides Abelard with an opportunity to extend his theme, already
anticipated in the Collationes, that God is more interested in inner in-
tention than outward works. Employing Stoic terminology that he had
used in discussion with Heloise, he describes works as in themselves in-
different, and able to be judged only by the root of their intention.49 In
the nal day of judgment, when all will be revealed, we shall see that
some have been predestined to eternal life, including those who were
purged before the day of judgment, and others to punishment, all accord-
ing to the intention behind their actions, or whether they came from a
good or a bad will.50
Abelard uses Pauls contrast between Jewish obedience to the law and
faith in God, open to Jews and Gentiles alike, to explore the interior
aspect of the ethical commitment demanded by faith in God. The issue
of circumcision, already raised in some sermons and in the Collationes,
provides a fulcrum for examining the relationship between outward reli-
gious observance and interior commitment. In particular, he paraphrases
at length Origens discussion of the topic, as well as passages from Haimo
of Auxerre and Augustine, in order to develop the argument that true
circumcision is of the heart rather than of the esh. Abelard introduces
into his discussion a number of questions that occur to him. Some, such
as those about idolatry as distinct from reverence for icons, or whether
God can be said to act justly in allowing someone to fall into sin, or
whether God can be described as the cause of sin, he promises to deal
with in his Theologia (although in fact he does not always do so).51 He
also raises the question of whether Christ himself, if he was fully human
as well as fully divine, was free to sin. His resolution of the issue is very
similar to his argument about free will and providence in the third book
of the Theologia: that, if Christ was endowed with free will, statements
about possibility must apply to Christ as a man even though as both
God and man, it was impossible for him to sin.
The most important such digression occurs in the second book of the
Commentaria, which deals with Romans 3:196:18. Above all, Abelard
confronts the questions of what exactly is the redemption of humanity

achieved through the death of Christ, by what necessity God assumed
human form, and from what we have been redeemed.52 Although Paul
does not deal with Christs redemption at this point in the Epistle, and
never speaks about humanity as being under the power of the devil, Ab-
elard raises here the common interpretation of Christs redemption in
Latin tradition as about liberating humanity from subjection to some le-
gitimate control of the devil. It is said that he has redeemed us from the
power of the devil, who, through the fault of the rst man freely submit-
ting to him, possessed power over him by a kind of right, and would
always possess this power until a liberator would come.53 Augustine had
never explicitly theorized redemption in this way, but he had often made
comments about the devil having some legitimate right over man, until
Christ, born without any bondage to the chain of lust, paid this ransom
through his blood. In the teaching of both Anselm of Laon and William
of Champeaux, this image of the right of the devil was seen as an
integral part of Christian doctrine, bound up with the teaching, so much
inuenced by Augustine, that human nature had been corrupted through
a sin that had its roots in sexual transgression. Some forty years before
Abelard composed this commentary, St. Anselm had challenged the no-
tion that Christ had somehow tricked the devil into forfeiting a legitimate
right over sinful humanity through formulating a dialogue between him-
self and Boso, his disciple, but still emphasized the gulf between a corrupt
humanity and the sinless God-man, begotten of the Virgin. Abelard goes
much further than the argument of St. Anselm in rejecting the image of
the devil as enjoying some legitimate power over humanity. If a servant
escaped from a lord and was seduced to follow another master, he was
not bound by some legitimate right to this new master. The only power
that the devil enjoyed was like that of a prison guard who wickedly tor-
tures humanity. It was only divine mercy that was able to free humanity
from such bondage.
Abelard interprets the redemption and reconciliation to God achieved
through the blood of Christ in terms not of expiation but of his teaching
us through word and example even to death, and thus binding us to
himself through longing (amor) so that true love (caritas) would fear noth-
ing for his sake.54 He does not doubt that through their faith many of
those who came before Christ rose to the supreme love of God as much
as those who came after Christ. Our redemption is the supreme love
(dilectio) that not only frees us from the slavery of sin but brings us the
true freedom of the sons of God, who, as we know, do all things through
love rather than fear. Redemption is thus completed by the love (caritas)
of God being brought to completion through the Holy Spirit. Even in

the Theologia Christiana, Abelard had promised to discuss the incarnation
of the Word rather than its divinity.55 In the commentary he promises to
cover these themes more fully in a forthcoming Anthropologia, a title pre-
sumably devised by analogy with his Theologia. Although scribes initially
copied this word (never otherwise attested in medieval Latin) as either
Tropologia or Theologia, there seems little doubt that Abelard intended
Anthropologia, also mentioned in a later section of the commentary.56
These passages of the Commentaria, much quoted by William of St.-
Thierry and Bernard of Clairvaux as evidence of Abelards betrayal of
Christian doctrine, crystallize an understanding of redemption much more
consistent with a more positive view of human potential than that pre-
sented by Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux. Just as Abelard
makes caritas the core of his ethical teaching, so he interprets redemption
as the revelation of divine love to humanity through the life and death
of Christ rather than through any notion that the devil had been cheated
by a perfect God-man offering himself in place of humanity. Abelard
transfers Pauls questioning of whether circumcision is essential to salva-
tion to a larger issue of whether baptism itself is necessary for salvation.
He argues that someone like David, if he had charity in his heart, was
not damned because he died before he could be baptized. Anyone who
loves God sincerely and purely is predestined to life if he lives before
learning through preaching or the Holy Spirit whatever of the sacraments
is necessary for salvation.57 Another consequence of this is that he follows
St. Anselm in considering that children who have been baptized but die
before reaching an age to make decisions for themselves do not suffer the
pains of hell. This goes against the view of Augustine that all the unbap-
tized must suffer some form of punishment.58 Abelard sees baptism as like
circumcision in the pasta religious observance with a spiritual signi-
cance but not necessarily the decisive event that distinguishes the damned
from the saved. There were many uncircumcised righteous people, like
Job, rewarded for their faith. He argues that circumcision was not a gen-
eral precept enjoined on all people, like baptism, but rather a specic
precept enjoined on the Jews once by Abraham and a second time by
Joshua. (Here he criticizes Origen, whom he quotes at length, for inter-
preting this second precept in a purely gurative rather than a historical
way).59 Abelard reserves certain questionssuch as whether inner virtue
is sufcient for an eternal reward even if it is not implemented in action,
whether action increases the merit of a good will, and what the distinction
is between vice of the mind and sinto his Ethica.60
The classic proof text for the traditional doctrine of original sin was
Romans 5:1219: that sin entered the world through one man, and thus
death, and that through one mans obedience, that of Christ, we have
been made righteous. Abelard does not deny the presence of sin inherited
from Adam, or that sin existed prior to the written law, but he observes
that Paul is here setting up a comparison between Adam, through whom
many (but not all) sinned, and Christ, modeled on Adam.61 The old and
interminable question of the human race is that of original sin. In the
sentences of both Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux, Augus-
tines teaching about the corruption of human nature through the sin of
Adam was an article of faith. To Abelard it seems contrary to Gods
goodness that divinity could be so cruel as to entrust humanity to dam-
nation. His solution is to argue that what Paul says about inheriting sin
from Adam is in fact about inheritance of the punishment of sin rather
than sin itself. His offspring are not condemned for any crime other than
inheriting the sin of Adam. Fault can only lie with those who have mis-
used their free will. He also nds passages from both Augustine and Je-
rome that support the notion that a child is not in himself or herself
guilty of sin, in order to counter the view, also attributed to Augustine,
that unbaptized children do suffer torment. This would be to attribute to
God an act of appalling cruelty.62 Would it not be wicked to consign an
innocent son to ames for the sins of his father? Abelard refuses to con-
sider that God could ever be responsible for causing injury to anyone.
Those things that seem very bad all have a deeper meaning to those who
understand Thy will be done. Were there not many practices in the
Old Testament, perhaps suitable at the time, that are now outmoded?
While Augustine had argued that unbaptized children suffered the gen-
tlest of punishments, Abelard did not think that there was any child who
received such a reward, except perhaps to spare some from harsher tor-
ments in the future. The sufferings that God might seem to inict on Job
or the martyrs might seem harsh, but they all served a greater end. Just
as Abelard seeks in his correspondence with Heloise to lift God from the
accusation of cruelty in his allowing them both to suffer, so here he at-
tempts to absolve God from responsibility for consigning much of hu-
manity to damnation. Although he does not see the inheritance of lust
as grounds in itself for damnation, he shares the traditional opinion that
original sin is transmitted through carnal lust. He considers that Augus-
tines assertion in his Enchiridion that without divine grace Adams off-
spring were more increasingly bound in sin as time went on, followed
more the probable opinion of others, rather than his own belief.63 Ab-
elard reiterates the teaching of both Anselm of Laon and William of
Champeaux that sin is transmitted to humanity through the carnal lust
of sexual intercourse, but he differs from them in not seeing this as

grounds for damnation. Lust is the consequence of original sin rather than
sin itself. Through Gods mercy our sins are forgiven, and punishment in
the life to come is lifted. The suffering we may endure in this world, most
acute in death, simply serves to make us ready for an eternal reward.64
Abelard then applies this preoccupation with the meaning of suffering
to the passion of Christ, about whose redeeming death Paul had written
so richly. The soul of that man [Christ] longed for our salvation, which
he knew how to agree to through his death, and tolerate that for which
he longed.65 Abelard presents the suffering of Christ in a way that ac-
centuates his frailty and love for humanity. Rather than dwell on the
transcendent Word present in Christ, like Bernard of Clairvaux, Abelard
presents the sufferings of Jesus in much the same way he portrays them
in his biblical laments. With Christ, however, the bondage of death is
broken.
When it comes to Pauls exhortation to personal holiness, Abelard is
more traditional. We must avoid the chains of harmful lust in order to
live according to the will of God. When adorning ourselves to please
women, preparing for a ght, or using our tongue to make money, we run
the risk of turning wrongful desire into action.66 The third book of the
commentary (on Rom. 6:199:5) deals with the Christian life. Abelard
reiterates the Pauline contrast between a life of slavery to carnal passion
and a life of the Spirit. The core of the Christian message, exemplied
most fully by Christ in both his teaching and his life and death, is the
call to love God and ones neighbor. This, he argues, is also the essence
of the teaching of Augustine. Adapting Heloises argument about the pu-
rity of true love, he emphasizes that true and sincere love (dilectio) exists
only for the sake of the other and not for any material benet.67
Pauls reections on the contrast between his desire to do good and
his also being a slave to sin (Rom. 7:1425) provoke Abelard to his own
thoughts on the subject, which are much less developed than in the Scito
teipsum. He expands upon Pauls phrase I do not what I want, but what
I do not want (7:15) to explain that all sin, or rather all sinful action,
springs from the will, but that when we sin, we do both what we want
and what we do not want. When one sleeps with someone elses wife,
intercourse may be pleasing, but not the offense or the guilt of adultery.68
Abelard does not challenge the idea that through lust we are under the
slavery of sin, but emphasizes that sin is an act of the will and that only
through the grace of divine love, manifest in Christ and mediated through
the Holy Spirit, can our will be turned to the good. What Paul describes
as the chain of sin, Abelard understands as the effect of sin, as we always
retain the freedom not to follow a bad will. The spirit of God is that of
love, which became fully incarnate in Christ. In baptism our sins are
forgiven, but many people still live for temporal rather than eternal re-
ward. They seek sacraments more out of self-interest than for the sake of
eternity. Abelard emphasizes that when Paul speaks of the elect being
predestined to eternal life, this may be necessary in Gods providence, but
it does not mean that our own behavior is conditioned by necessity, a
theme that he reserves to the Theologia. Abelards emphasis on interiority
leads him to conclude that when we ask the saints to intercede for us we
are really asking them to help us by their love and merits rather than by
speaking any words. When we say Holy Peter, pray for us, we are really
saying Have mercy on us, Lord, because of the merits of blessed Peter.
Abelard reiterates the great theme of Paul that nothing can separate us
from the love of Christ.69
The fourth and nal book of the commentary (on Rom. 9:616:27)
deals with Gods promise to Israel and the way God wishes us to live.
Abelard takes up Pauls theme that while God had not abandoned his
promise to the seed of Abraham, he is concerned with inner disposition
rather than with the external performance of religious duties. While the
phrase Jacob I have loved, but I have hate for Esau (Mal. 1:23) seems
to imply that God is cruel toward Esau, God does not have any particular
favorites, and calls all people to himself.70 Everything in creation has a
purpose, even that which seems to go against the will of God: And
certainly more use came from the wickedness of Judas than from the
righteousness of Peter.71 Continuing his theme that God cannot be
blamed for being unjust in the way he gives or takes away divine grace,
Abelard argues that God offers his grace to all, but that we differ in how
we respond to that grace. One person, perhaps meager in resources, may
be kindled by desire for the kingdom of heaven, while someone else,
perhaps physically more capable, is driven by laziness. What matters is
always their inner intention, ones inner will. Abelards emphasis on the
role of the will contrasts with Augustines argument in his writing against
the Pelagians that our redemption is entirely dependent on the gift of
grace. Without arguing against Augustine, he argues that the will must
always choose to respond to divine grace.
Pauls theme that God has not abandoned the Jews but offers his grace
to all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, provides Abelard with an oppor-
tunity to reect on the divine goodness that he sees as sustaining creation
and visible in creation. Above all, he picks up the theme of true brotherly
love that ought to bind all children of God. When Paul gives advice such
as Bless those who persecute you, never curse them, bless them (Rom.
12:14), Abelard comments that when we excommunicate someone, we

do curse them. But when the saints act by love of justice, they may curse
someone, but without a will to do so.72 Similarly, a judge forced by law
to kill someone is not guilty of murder because he does not act by his
will, as it is the law rather than a person who commits the murder. Since
God considers the heart rather than words, why pray to God with words?
His answer is that we do so for our own benet, as these words lift our
understanding to God. While Rachel may weep for her children, all
things, no matter how terrible, are ultimately ordained for the good. Even
the power of the devil or of some wicked person could be good, even
though their will might be bad. This leads to Abelard expanding on what
he sees as the core theme of Paul: that the fullness of the law lies in love
of God, a love directed with the best will and intention toward him, and
in love of neighbor, whereby we have a good will for another. He even
asks whether we should love those in hell or those not predestined for
eternal life. Yet charity often forces us to go beyond measure and to wish
for all people to be saved. He leaves these questions to his Ethica.73
Pauls advice about whether or not Christians should follow traditional
Jewish observances provokes Abelard to reect that whether we eat or
fast, we do so for the honor of the Lord. Specic observances are not as
important as the intention in which they are done. In all things we should
follow our conscience. One question about forbidden food he reserves to
discussion on the Epistle to the Galatians, a valuable sign that his com-
mentary on Romans may only have been part of a much longer series of
commentaries on the other Pauline Epistles. The Commentarius Cantibri-
giensis seems to have been compiled by a student of Abelard who had
heard his teacher lecture on the entire Pauline corpus and even included
a story about Heloise.74 Abelard closes the commentary on Romans by
quoting a number of patristic and ecclesiastical prohibitions about food
and drink, but observes, if we discuss them carefully in their fundamental
intention, we nd that these and other things were sometimes prohibited
and sometimes allowed because of the season or the time.75 The problem
that confronted Paul about whether or not Christians should follow the
precepts of the Jewish law provides Abelard with an opportunity to reect
on the authority of Christian precepts in general.
The commentary on Romans is different in character from the Colla-
tiones in following the constraints of having to explicate the entire Pauline
text rather than simply developing certain favored arguments. It is a more
consciously scholastic work in introducing students to a range of patristic
authorities who had written about the Epistle. At the same time, the
commentary tackles questions that Abelard had never raised in his Theo-
logia and that were raised only in passing in the Collationes. Pauls Epistle
demanded that he concentrate not on philosophical questions about vir-
tue or the supreme good but on how Christ redeemed humanity. In the
Collationes, Abelard raised questions about the relationship between Jew-
ish, Gentile, and Christian approaches to ethics and redemption that he
tackles in more detail within his commentary on Paul. His reading of one
of the foundation texts of Christian theology emphasizes that external
religious observance is never as important as inner intention in the eyes
of God. By distancing himself from any assumption that human nature is
naturally corrupt, he explains that what Paul has to say about the rule of
sin is in fact about the consequences of sin. All people, whether Jew or
Gentile, have the capacity to accept divine grace and turn away from a
will that is bad or corrupt. Prior to the incarnation humanity was not
held prisoner by the devil through any legitimate right. There were many
virtuous and upright people who lived before Christ, even without access
to the observances of the law. Through the teaching and example of
Christ, both in his life and his death, we can be led to the true love of
God. Pauls rhetoric about our being under the rule of sin needs to be
understood for its true intention, that is, to warn us against doing wrong
and to encourage us to do good, above all to open ourselves to the true
love of God manifest in Christ. In the Collationes, the Christian talks to
the philosopher about the supreme good without explaining how we may
reach it. Commenting on the writing of Paul provided Abelard with a
way of answering this question.
The Expositio in Hexaemeron
In the Collationes, Abelard had explored the relationship between exter-

nal religious observances and the ethical demands of philosophy, as well
as the relationship between ethics and Christian teaching about the su-
preme good, but he never touched on the relationship between natural
science and the Bible. While he was an authority on both logica and
ethica, he did not have expertise in physica in the manner of Thierry of
Chartres or William of Conches. Abelard had no works of Aristotle on
natural science available to him, and he had long been suspicious of
interpreting Platonic writings that dealt with creation, such as the Ti-
maeus, in any literal sense. This makes it all the more intriguing that
sometime in the 1130s, probably after the commentary on Romans, He-
loise asked him to reect on the nature of the created world in the form
of a commentary on the Hexaemeron, the six days of creation. In an
introductory preface, Abelard had observed that while there had been
many authorities who had attempted to unravel the mystical sense of the
book of Genesis, only Augustine had endeavored to explore what it had
to say at a literal or historical level. As Heloise had reportedly found
much that was obscure in Augustine, he was now going to offer his own
interpretation.76
Abelards Expositio on the six days of creation has never attracted at-
tention like the Collationes, with its bold ethical arguments, or the com-
mentary on Romans, with its outspoken declaration of a new theology of
redemption. Abelard had to work out new ground in this treatise. In his
Theologia, he had commented on a few phrases from the book of Genesis
that relate to the divine nature, but he had not been concerned to de-
scribe the nature of creation. The discussion of Thierry of Chartres on
the same topic, also produced in the 1130s, is much more a reection on
the nature of the elements from which creation is constructed.77 Abelards
presentation is sustained by a more distinctly theological vision, inspired
by the same key text as inspired his other theological writingsthat the
invisible things of God are revealed through the creation of the world.
Unlike Hugh of St.-Victor, Abelard offered his teaching about God
through the teaching of pagan philosophers as much as of Scripture. It
was thus a legitimate request from Heloise that he go into much more
detail than he had before about the meaning of the rst chapters of Gen-
esis.
Abelard was familiar with the ancient scientic theory, transmitted by
Augustine, that the universe was constituted out of four elements, with
earth and water being heavier than air and re. Whereas Augustine had
always been concernedeven when interpreting Genesis ad litteram
with a higher, spiritual meaning, Abelard emphasizes (like Hugh of St.-
Victor) that the rationality of creation itself demonstrates the wisdom and
goodness of God. The spirit of the Lord brooding over the waters is like
a mother hen nurturing an egg, in which are contained the four ele-
ments.78 In his Theologia, Abelard had emphasized that the Holy Spirit
was not just the divine caritas by which the Father and Son loved each
other with a perfect love, but divine benignitas toward creation. Abelard
now expands on the consequence of this theme, shifting his vocabulary
slightly in identifying the Holy Spirit quite simply as the goodness (bon-
itas) by which the world has been made and is sustained. The term spiritus,
he reminds his readers, means breath, and thus is like the wind blowing
across the waters.79 Even though Abelard does not have the same mastery
of scientic texts as Thierry of Chartres, he still relates philosophical and
scriptural understanding of the created world. Thus when Platonic phi-
losophers speak of both an intelligible and a sensible world, this is not

contrary to Scripture, as they are referring to the divine providence by
which the world is ordered. Abelards tendency to be suspicious of the
reality of Platonic forms leads him to emphasize the physical uniqueness
of the created world, even if he lacks the scientic tools with which to
describe its composition. He is aware, for example, of debate about the
meaning of the phrase waters above the heavens, given that water was
heavier than air. Had the waters above the heavens crystallized into ice?
He prefers to side with Augustine in refusing to come to a certain decision
on the topic. He similarly doubts that the days of creation are comparable
in length of time to normal days, but cannot reect on this in too much
detail.80
The underlying message of his commentary on the days of creation is
quite simply that the works of creation are fundamentally good and ra-
tional and undisturbed by sin. Natural processes have their foundation in
natural forces implanted by God in creation. Abelard is convinced that
natural science, as far as he understands it, is fully compatible with the
scriptural record. One contested issue is about the stars and the planets,
whether they can be identied as living beings or even as gods, as in some
aspects of Platonic tradition. His inclination is to doubt such claims and
to maintain that all creation is dependent on divine goodness. Abelard
is particularly critical of those who invoke astronomia so as to justify the
claim that the stars exercise inuence over humanity. Such claims he sees
as implying an absurd denial of free will and the possibility of things in
the future occurring either in one way or another. We are unable to
predict the future.81 Although not informed by the specialist knowledge
of scholars such as Adelard of Bath, who were interested in dening the
rational principles behind the universe, he is sympathetic to the broader
project of nding harmony between physica and Scripture.
His analysis takes on a personal and not wholly comfortable note when
he comments on the creation of man and woman. Developing a line of
thought offered him by Augustine, he explains that man is more worthy
than woman in being made in the image of God because he is particularly
like the Son, while woman is made in the divine likeness: Man shines
over woman through wisdom and reasoning, and in being wiser was un-
able to be seduced by the devil.82 The story of Eve being created from
Adams rib gave powerful justication to an assumption that Adam was
closer to God through the gift of reason. These attitudes are consistent
with Abelards criticism in the Historia calamitatum of those religious com-
munities (such as Fontevrault) in which women rule over men. Whether
they met with Heloises approval is another matter. Interestingly, when
he comes back to this theme later in the Expositio, he nuances his opinion
in arguing that womans coming from Adams rib meant that she was
intended to be a companion and collateral, not someone over or below
man (as would be the case if she came from the upper or lower part of
man).83
Abelard is more at ease with broader philosophical and theological
themes that he had already covered in earlier writingabove all, with
that of the goodness of all creationthan with questions of anthropology
and the social order, in which he is sometimes quite traditional in his
attitudes. He argues that none of the works of God can ever be said to
be bad, even though they may often be difcult for us. The more life is
difcult, the more we desire what is completely free from all difculty.
For further discussion of what is good, bad, or indifferent, Abelard refers
to his treatment of these matters in the Collationes, indirectly suggesting
that Heloise was familiar with this work.84
Abelards organization of his commentary into the historical, moral,
and allegorical senses is rooted in the exegetical technique of Gregory the
Great. Yet where Gregory gives so much attention to the moral and al-
legorical meanings of Scripture, Abelard concentrates on its historical
sense. Under the label of moralitas, he reinforces his great theme about
the goodness of the Holy Spirit within creation, in order to show the
parallel between the work of creation and the operation of caritas within
our own hearts when we engage in good works. Under the label of alle-
goria, Abelard deepens his commentary on the passage of Genesis about
paradise, which he understands as an actual place, established before the
making of heaven and earth, untouched by the ood, from which hu-
manity is now distant. There is little that is strictly allegorical about his
interpretation. He suggests that Adam and Eve must have lived there
without sin for some years, as they had to acquire the skills of speech.85
This reection on language enables him to connect up with a theme that
he had started to consider three decades earlier with the help of Aristotle:
that human language had been acquired by Adam rather than simply
implanted in Adam by God. There were those who thought Adam and
Eve were not in paradise even for a day before they were expelled. One
would have to argue that God employed signs, as they had not yet learned
the words necessary to understand a divine command. Abelard is subse-
quently even more explicit in rejecting the notion that Adam could have
acquired all his linguistic skills between morning and noon of a single
day.86
There is relatively little in the Expositio on the nature of sin, the topic
he explores so much more fully in his Scito teipsum. At the beginning of
a section not included in the standard printed edition of the Expositio,

he goes directly into the second person: But perhaps you ask why he
forbade that in which he knew they would sin, and in which there would
be no sin, if he had not given the command.87 To this very profound
question of why God should prohibit anything from being eaten in par-
adise if it was good, he responds that this was a way through which his
great love (caritas) for humanity could be demonstrated more fully, and
that accordingly we could love God all the more. We can only presume
that in a treatise addressed to Heloise, he is reporting a criticism that she
had made: But if you object that no human being would sin if those rst
men had not sinned, or if they had not accepted the rst command to
obedience . . .88 He insists that this is contrary to reason and authority,
drawing his argument not from a theological principle but from the ex-
perience of parenthood: For who does not know that bad children can
be born from upright parents, and vice versa. The next generations were
stronger in resisting sin than those to whom God had given a specic
command. Abelard seems to be engaging in discussion directly with He-
loise when he reports, You say that it was such a minor sin, easily xed,
to taste that apple, which ought never to have received such a great
punishment on all their offspring, and yet deserved minor satisfaction in
punishment.89 In this argument between God and Eve, Abelard sides
with God. Man needed to learn from the punishment given to that small
sin about the grave consequences that would follow any move to displease
God. Although he shares with Heloise an inability to accept the full
weight of Augustines teaching about the burden of original sin and the
corruption of the human will, he still insists that we should learn from
adversity to listen to the will of God. Although he does not dwell on sin,
he reminds Heloise of its reality: That the state of man before sin was
more worthy and better is clearly shown by the fact that he could then
incur no experience of shame about his nudity or in the inspection of his
genitals, and that in consequence we are now, after sin [i.e., the fall],
greatly confusedalthough we may have very great pleasure in the use
of such limbs, so that the greater the experience of shame, the more
delightful the physical pleasure. That this experience of shame happens
after sin is clear from the fact that no one is moved to intercourse except
in the manner of a beast [beluino more], that is, by carnal pleasure alone,
not by any acquired intention toward God.90 The text of the Expositio
breaks off at this point. The line of thought is fully consistent with what
Abelard was saying in the Historia calamitatum and the subsequent letters
to Heloise. Strictly speaking, intercourse is not a sin in itself, but is driven,
in his view, by animal desire. For all his difculty with the teaching of
Augustine, these are issues on which he feels a profound afnity with this
Father of the Church, who also knew about the chains of lust.
The Problemata Heloissae
That Heloise continued to challenge Abelard about the meaning of sin,

an issue on which he touched so little in the Collationes, is evident from
the Problemata Heloissae, a letter from Heloise that includes some forty-
two questions about difcult passages in Scripture, to which Abelard sup-
plies sometimes very extended answers. As with so many of these texts,
the Problemata supply no clear indication of when they were written.
Whether she sent them before or after requesting the commentary on
Genesis is not clear. The fact that Abelard is obliged by her to consider
the nature of sin suggests that these are questions to which he had not
given adequate answer in the Expositio, although he would address them
much more fully in his Scito teipsum. In his Rule and subsequent Ep. IX
on the study of letters, Abelard had urged Heloise and her nuns to apply
themselves to the study of Scripture. She reports that they were troubled
by many passages, for which they wanted explanations.
The questions raised by Heloise are not about minor details in Scrip-
ture. Many of them focus in one way or another on questions of sin and
ethical behavior. What does it mean to say, He will show the world
wrong about sin, about justice, and about judgment: about sin because
they did not believe in me (John 16:811), or Whoever keeps the entire
law but offends in one matter is guilty of all (James 2:1011)?91 Some-
times the questions reveal acute awareness of the implications of a scrip-
tural passage that Heloise observes is ambiguous. Thus when Christ re-
sponds to the question about his identity with the answer You yourself
have said it, what exactly was he saying?92 When Christ said of the
woman taken in adultery, Let him who is without sin cast the rst stone,
does he not forbid anyone from imposing judgment, as none of us is
without sin?93 These are questions that provoke Abelard to extended re-
ection, effectively acknowledging the point that she implicitly makes,
that systems of ecclesiastical justice contravene the teaching of Jesus. The
groundwork is already being laid for themes that he will develop more
fully in the Scito teipsum. These Problemata are a rich source of insight
into an extraordinarily intelligent woman, fully capable of answering these
questions herself. In many cases, the questions are put at such length that
it is clear Heloise already has her own opinions on the matter, exactly as
in the case with her letter requesting a monastic rule from Abelard.
The nal question that she puts to him, whether anyone can sin in
doing something ordained by God, relates very specically to the com-
mand in Genesis 1:28, Grow and multiply and ll the earth. Abelard
had commented briey on this verse in his Expositio, but without aware-
ness of the ethical challenge it presents to centuries of ascetic tradition,
which had interpreted the sexual act as sinful in itself and sometimes as
the original sin for which Adam and Eve had been banished from para-
dise. She may deliberately be questioning Abelards concluding remarks
in the Expositio, that man could now only engage in sexual intercourse
in the manner of a beast.94 Heloise reminds him that intercourse was
originally ordained by God and thus could not be sinful in itself. Whether
he included this question in the Sic et non as a result of his discussions
with Heloise we cannot tell. It is evident, however, that she was here
touching on one of the most sensitive aspects of his thinking. In the
Collationes and the commentary on Romans, Abelard had emphasized the
interior nature of true religion in a way that was largely in sympathy with
the kind of questions that Heloise was raising. At the same time, however,
Abelard was a monk, shaped in a very profound way by the demands of
ascetic tradition. Above all, he had received an extraordinary punishment
for sexual misbehavior in the pastcastration. Part of the logic of his
argument in the Historia calamitatum is that even the most appalling dis-
asters can be turned to the good by those who turn from their will to do
Gods will. Heloise found this difcult to accept.
Abelards solution to her specic question is to recognize that she does
have a very good point and that there are many examples in Scripture
which show that the command to procreate could never be sinful in itself.
He is fully aware of what Jerome, his erstwhile hero in the ascetic life,
had to say about the importance of virginity and the need to overcome
the res of lust, but he nds in Augustines De bono coniugali valuable
insight into marriage. Unlike Jerome, for whom the metaphor of corrup-
tion was that of sexual intercourse, Augustine has a clear awareness that
intercourse, when directed to procreation, is not inherently wrong. Cor-
ruption occurs in the will, as Abelard had emphasized in his commentary
on Romans. Abelard prefers to quote Augustine at length in his answer
to Heloises nal question rather than to theorize more fully about what
actually constitutes sin. Only in the Scito teipsum does he consider that
Augustines denition of sin as mala voluntas may be inadequate to ac-
count for those inner desires and sexual fantasies that cross the mind, that
are wrong only when one consents to them in deliberate contempt for
God. The question put by Heloise, supercially so simple, touches on
profound issues that Abelard had skated over in his grandly optimistic
and rational vision of theology. Her accusation is that in his reections

on language, the supreme good, and philosophical ethics, he has not yet
fully examined his own human nature.
The Carmen ad Astralabium
These questions of Heloise about what constitutes vice and virtue were
formulated by Abelard in an unusually vivid way within a didactic poem
that he composed for his son, the Carmen ad Astralabium. This is not a
theoretical discussion, like the Collationes or Scito teipsum. Rather, Abelard
seeks to distill what he sees as his central messagethat in the nal
analysis actions count larger than wordswithin vivid poetic examples.
Unlike the Planctus or the hymns, the poem does not seek to impress
with crafted images. Rather, it communicates urgent wisdom:
By the fruit of apples, not by the leaves, is each man fed
And meaning must be preferred to words.
Persuasion may seize minds with ornate words;
To teaching plainness is rather owed.
An abundance of words exists where there is not an abundance of meaning,
And let it be agreed that one who wanders about, multiplies the ways.95
There is a practical wisdom in this poem which suggests that it was writ-
ten relatively late in the 1130s (although this is certainly open to debate).
As in the Collationes, Abelard speaks of reason as the necessary guide to
life in a world of confusion. In the Carmen, however, he does not shy
away from talking about the complaint of Heloise that she cannot feel
true repentance for the sins she had committed. Sin, however, he denes
not as breaking some social code but as having contempt for God:
There is the frequent complaint of our Heloise on this matter
Which she is often wont to say to me and to herself:
If, unless I repent of what I earlier committed,
I cannot be saved, no hope remains for me:
So sweet are the joys of what we did
That those things which pleased too much, when remembered give relief.96
Abelards point is that these pleasures were not themselves sinful if they
did not involve contempt for God. What matters most is that we speak
the truth. By sound knowledge of who we are, we nd peace.
The Carmen is a rich and still largely untapped source of insight into
the ethical and practical wisdom that Abelard wished to share with his
son. While we cannot be sure exactly when it was composed, the passage
about the frequent complaint of Heloise suggests that even here she was
still forcing him to think about the denition of sin. Near the end of the
Carmen he reverts to a view that he had already articulated in his com-
mentary on Romans, that sin lies not in any action, but in the will:
Nothing of sin remains when the evil will subsides:
For it is this alone which makes one a sinner.97
Writing the Carmen helped Abelard think through in more depth what
constituted the difference between vice and virtue, as also between vice
and sin. Rather than fall back on the teachings of the ancient philoso-
phers, it was necessary for any ethical system to be based on knowing
oneself.
10
Faith, Sacraments, and Charity
A lthough in theory Abelard remained abbot of St.-Gildas until his

death in 1142, he spent much of his time during the 1130s teaching
in Paris on the Montagne Ste.-Genevie`ve.1 This was presumably at the
invitation of its dean, Stephen of Garlande, who had recovered his po-
sition as royal chancellor in 1131. While Abelard continued to teach
dialectic, his major creative energies were focused on theology and ethics.
A number of collections survive of his sententie about faith, sacraments,
and charity, which were taken down by disciples from his oral teaching,
probably at different moments during the 1130s.2 Internal differences
within these sentence collections suggest that he continued to rene some
lectures as his ideas developed, while others he left relatively unchanged.
Abelard never produced a denitive synthesis of teaching responding to
all the questions that he raised in the Sic et non. He preferred the freedom
of maneuver offered by the individual monograph. The exact sequence of
his writings during this decade is not certain. After completing the com-
mentary on Romans (and probably lecturing on the entire corpus of Pau-
line epistles), perhaps by the mid-1130s, he nished the third book of the
Theologia Scholarium. He then embarked on the treatise he had promised
readers of his commentary, which would be called his Ethica but which
actually circulated under the title Scito teipsum, or Know Yourself. While
he certainly completed its rst book, on vice and sin, we do not know
whether he ever lived to write any more than the rst pages that survive
of the promised second book, on the nature of virtue.
204
faith, sacraments, and charity 205
The most signicant teacher of divinity against whom Abelard had to

compete was Hugh, who had studied and then taught at St.-Victor with-
out interruption since 1115. During the 1120s while Abelard was con-
centrating on philosophical theology, Hugh composed a few treatises on
secular disciplines, but he applied more of his attention to showing how
Scripture could lead the mind to God. By the late 1120s, Hughs lectures
had been taken down by a specially appointed student, Laurence, and
preserved as Sententie de divinitate. In its prologue, Hugh is reported as
dening three essentials for salvation: faith, sacraments, and good works.3
Some time after this, perhaps by 1131, Hugh started work on an ency-
clopedic synthesis of theology, the De sacramentis Christianae dei.4 It is
divided into two books, the rst concerned with creation and the sac-
raments of the natural and written law, and the second with restoration,
namely, the incarnation and the sacraments of the Church. While he
acknowledges that the work of creation is described by secular authors,
the more noble task is that of mans restoration, expounded in Scripture
for the sake of mans salvation.5 Throughout his treatise, Hugh debates
many of the theological and ethical positions that Abelard advanced in
his own teaching. The fact that the De sacramentis quickly became rec-
ognized as an authoritative synthesis of Christian doctrine had major im-
plications for the way in which Abelards theological arguments would be
perceived.
Abelard and Hugh differed signicantly from each other in the way
that they approached the writing of theology, as well as in their resolution
of specic questions. Whereas Hugh used rhyming prose, without exces-
sive quotation from the Fathers, and organized his teaching around the
notion of sacrament, dened as a sign of a sacred thing, Abelard pre-
ferred a more analytic prose style, laced with precise quotation from pa-
tristic and philosophical authorities. He emphasized the inner intention
behind outward statements and observances, all of which are simply
means toward the fulllment of divine law, the law of love (caritas). As
Hugh responded to many opinions raised by Abelard in the Theologia
Scholarium and sentence collections, his De sacramentis provides a valu-
able lens through which to view Abelards teaching during the 1130s.
In his early reections on theology, Abelard had focused on the doc-
trine of the Trinity. While he had started to develop ideas about both
philosophical theology and ethics in the Collationes, he still needed to
show that he could resolve the many questions that he had sketched out
in the Sic et non. In the Theologia Christiana, he had doubled the size of
his original treatise by incorporating many digressions and patristic au-
thorities, but he had still not completed the discussion in its nal book
about Gods power (potency), wisdom, and goodness. Perhaps in prepa-

ration for returning to teaching, Abelard started to annotate the Theologia
Christiana in order to identify which passages he would retain and which
he would eliminate.6 At some point during this work of revision, he em-
barked on an even larger project, the Commentaria on Romans, in which
he refers to some issues as still to be dealt with in his forthcoming Theo-
logia.
In the new preface Abelard drafted for the revised Theologia, he ex-
plains that he is offering a kind of synthesis of sacred learning, as it were,
an introduction to divine Scripture, written to satisfy the demands of our
students, as far as we are able.7 He explains that his students considered
that if he were to complete his philosophical investigations, he needed
to turn his attention to the foundations of faith and so refute the false
reasoning of those who call themselves philosophers. He insists that he
does not wish to fall into heresy but thatlike Augustinehe is always
ready to correct himself. Hugh of St.-Victor adopts a similar phrase about
providing an introduction to Scripture in his own preface to the De sac-
ramentis. In his Sententie de divinitate, Hugh had taught that the three
essentials of salvation were faith, works, and sacraments.8 By replacing
opera with caritas, Abelard signals a major shift in emphasis from Hughs
teaching, already evident in the way that he had organized his ideas in
the Sic et non. Echoing a theme that Heloise had argued with great con-
viction, he denes caritas as honest love [amor honestus], directed to its
ultimate end and a good will to another for the sake of the other,
rather than a love that simply seeks personal reward and advantage. As
in his early attempt to dene love in response to the question of the
young Heloise, Abelard draws on Cicero to dene amor as a good will
toward another that wishes that persons good. Abelards denition of
caritas as amor honestus, an attempt to use Cicero to explain a central
theological virtue, has no precedent in classical or patristic literature,
although it would be silently adopted without acknowledgment by the
author of the Summa sententiarum in the late 1130s.9
In his discussion, Abelard may have drawn on a small treatise De car-
itate, often transmitted alongside sentences attributed to Anselm of Laon
or William of Champeaux but in fact more likely to have been written
by Walter of Mortagne (ca. 11001174), a former pupil of Alberic at
Reims.10 Walter, who started to teach at Laon in 1120 after falling out
with Alberic, develops Anselms emphasis that caritas is the foundation
of all ethics. Perhaps inuenced by a sympathy for Ciceronian ideals, he
holds that caritas is a movement of the spirit to love God, and ones
neighbor because of God, not for any reward, but for Gods sake alone.
He considers that the initial grade of caritas as that which binds family,
friends, and neighbors must itself be based on love of God, even though
it may be imperfect and exist outside the Church in a virtuous pagan.
This presupposes a positive view of caritas as present in an individual,
such as David, even when he falls into sin. While Walter is speaking
about caritas rather than amor and betrays no familiarity with the thinking
of William of St.-Thierry or Bernard, he has a fundamentally positive
understanding of love as present in all people of goodwill, and in its truest
form, not pursued for the sake of any reward. Abelard picks up on Walters
theme, but goes further in explaining that caritas is amor honestus or pure
love in the sense of pure longing. This idealism, that God is to be
pursued for his sake alone and not for any reward, recalls the protestations
of the young Heloise that true love does not pursue any personal advan-
tage.
Also new to the Theologia is Abelards denition of faith as the esti-
mation (existimatio) of what is not evident to the senses, modifying its
traditional denition (Heb. 11:1) as the substance of things hoped for,
the argument of what is not (physically) apparent. Abelard teaches that
faith, although the foundation of what is hoped for, provides only ap-
proximate knowledge of what will be fully revealed in the future. Drawing
on the Boethian denition of argument as reasoning that creates faith or
trust in something uncertain, he recognizes that there are many types of
faith, not all of which are necessary for salvation. He sees faith not as a
theological virtue but as the means through which we grasp partially what
is not apparent to the senses. In the De sacramentis, Hugh of St.-Victor
responds to Abelards denition of faith as existimatio by insisting that
faith is certainty, as where there is still doubt, there can be no faith.11 He
sees reason as limited in its capacity to grasp divine truths by faith. While
he recognizes that some people reject or question everything they hear,
or refuse to commit themselves to what is true, he sees true faith as a
necessary precondition of the more perfect state of full knowledge.
The contrast between Hugh and Abelard in the way they dene faith
is symptomatic of a broader difference between their approaches to the-
ology. Whereas Hugh begins his De sacramentis by reecting on the rst
chapters of Genesis and then considers how God reveals his triune nature
through his power (or potency), wisdom, and goodness or benignity, Ab-
elard is more consciously linguistic in analyzing the signicance of Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit as names signifying these three properties. Hugh
takes for granted the sacred character of Scripture and builds his entire
thought on that edice. Abelard, by contrast, takes his starting point in
the character of language itself, invented to signify and communicate
understanding, in this case of the attributes of God. Scripture and pagan

philosophical discourse thus both spring out of an attempt to understand
the divine.
Abelard leaves fundamentally unchanged his basic thesis that the
names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit signify different attributes of God.
He does pay new attention, however, to a particularly controversial aspect
of his denition, that is, his attribution of power especially to the Father,
even though the three persons share a common divine nature. He is not
saying that either the Son or the Holy Spirit is less than omnipotent, a
claim that would contradict the Athanasian Creed.12 At stake is not Gods
nature, but what we can legitimately say about the Father or the Son. In
one passage, Abelard revises the wording of an earlier draft of this part
of the Theologia Scholarium in which he had described divine wisdom,
or the power of discretion, as like a portion of divine potentiality, in direct
response to the friendly criticisms of Walter of Mortagne.13 It is a measure
of his respect for Walter that he drops this potentially controversial ter-
minology in a revision of this passage, preferring to say simply that wisdom
is a kind of power through which God discerns and knows all things
perfectly. Walters criticism touches on the most sensitive part of Abelards
theology, namely, his tendency to steer away from emphasizing the om-
nipotence of the three divine persons and draw attention to what was
distinctive about the divine wisdom manifest in Christ and the divine
goodness manifest in the Holy Spirit. As in the Historia calamitatum, he
emphasizes that there are many precedents for speaking about particular
attributes of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. As it turned out, Abelards
improved wording did not stop William of St.-Thierry or Bernard of Clair-
vaux from critiquing the Theologia.
Abelard prepared the new introduction through a series of drafts, each
linked with his marked-up version of the Theologia Christiana, in which
he had selected the central elements to be retained in the Theologia Scho-
larium. There are a few new elements, such as his bringing up the idea,
inuenced by Augustine and Paul (1 Cor. 11:7), that in the phrase in
Genesis Let us make man [hominem] in our image and likeness (Gen.
1:26), man (vir) is made in the image of God because he is founded more
perfectly than woman, and so is closer to the perfection of the supreme
good.14 He reects that it was the woman rather than the man who was
seduced by the serpent and that Adam accepted the apple out of love,
not wanting to disappoint her, presuming too much in the mercy of God,
and without believing that she was acting maliciously. Who does not agree
that God is loved more by a woman than a man? Did she not think that
God was speaking to her when the serpent deceived her? Abelards re-
ection on sin, not part of his central argument, reveals both the tradi-
tional nature of his assumptions about the hierarchy of man over woman
and his desire not to magnify original sin out of proportion. Hugh of St.-
Victor was closer to William of Champeaux in arguing that Eve, puffed
up by pride, had raised herself against the Creator with greater guilt than
Adam. Abelard develops his argument about man being superior to the
woman in wisdom and reason, without raising the issue of who had the
greater guilt, in his Expositio in Hexaemeron, perhaps written after this
passage in the Theologia Scholarium.15
As in the Expositio, Abelard prefers to dene the Holy Spirit as divine
goodness rather than just divine benignity.16 When copying out sections
from the earlier Theologia Christiana, he does not change benignitas, but
is more exible in how he describes divine goodness. He takes pains to
explain that the Father or divine power is no more than the divine po-
tency on which all things depend, but expands further how divine good-
ness is manifest through creation by adding further patristic authorities to
support his argument that Christians have always recognized the inspired
quality of the ancient philosophers. Some authorities are relatively little
known, such as Claudians De statu animae or a sermon (wrongly identied
as the De spiritu et littera) in which Augustine is recorded as celebrating
the beauty of the natural world and the capacity of noble philosophers
to know their creator.17 Given that his arguments are generating criticism,
Abelard takes more care to draw on the Fathers to justify his argument
that when Paul spoke about the blindness of the philosophers, he was
only speaking about a small group, not the majority.18 Philosophers have
always shunned popular superstition. It would thus be wrong to assume
that they were all damned for eternity, without any knowledge of the
ways of God. Whereas Hugh of St.-Victor does not devote any attention
at all to the insights of pagan philosophy in the De sacramentis, preferring
to focus on Scripture as his authority, Abelard reinforces his tendency to
quote verbatim from the Fathers to support the arguments he puts forward,
many times drawing on his Sic et non.
The second book of the new Theologia contains a careful summary of
the core elements of the second, third, and fourth books of the Theologia
Christiana, with some signicant new improvements. Whereas Abelard
had originally justied his argument on the Trinity as an attack on false
dialecticians such as Roscelin of Compie`gne, he now has to direct his
argument against those who question drawing on pagan testimony at all
in talking about religious faith. He had devoted the whole of the second
book of the Theologia Christiana to making this point, particularly in re-
lation to pagan testimony about ethics. Aware that many of these ideas
have been covered in his Collationes and are to be developed in his Ethica,
Abelard summarizes the key aspects of his earlier argument, but then
expands on the theme that reasoning is essential, not to dene what truth
might be but to resist the false reasoning of those who are unspiritual. As
in a letter against those ignorant of dialectic, he argues that the Fathers
of the Church, Augustine in particular, had never condemned the study
of the liberal arts, only poetic ctions that cause the mind to wander.
The warning of Paul that knowledge puffs up (1 Cor. 8:1) was frequently
invoked by monastic writers against those who taught in the schools.
Abelard in turns warns against those seeking solace for their ignorance
(a favorite phrase) who argue that it is wrong to draw on secular philos-
ophy to discuss matters of faith. Above all, he argues, reasoning is needed
to overcome the heresies and disputes that trouble the Christian com-
munity.19 Abelard uses his vast knowledge of patristic literature to observe
that the desire to refute error has always been the motivation behind
writing about Christian faith. Their attempts to nd suitable analogies to
promote belief provide a precedent for his own effort, using arguments
that he nds more rational and convincing.
Abelards discussion resolves the initial question presented in the Sic
et non about whether the workings of God can ever be grasped through
reason. Too often, he reasons, passages from Gregory the Great are mis-
quoted by those who wish to nd comfort in their ignorance, when faith
is in fact an estimation of what is unseen, and therefore must nd anal-
ogies to glimpse what is ultimately beyond human denition. This reec-
tion on faith, far deeper than anything he had provided in the Theologia
Christiana, ties in to his opening remarks about the faith as the basis of
any effort to understand what is not evident to the senses. It is quite
erroneous, he maintains, to say that nothing can be understood about the
Trinity in this life. Paul himself was always urging greater understanding
and building up of the community, for which rational argument was es-
sential.20
There is a polemical quality to Abelards argument that is quite dif-
ferent from the contemplative character of De sacramentis. Before includ-
ing his summary of some contemporary theological errors, he mentions
Tanchelin of Utrecht and Peter of Bruys as dangerous radicals whose ideas
need to be opposed, so as to create an alarmist mood for his account of
other supposedly heretical teachers who hold the seat of pestilence
against us. The opinions that he assigns to these teachers, one in France
(Alberic of Reims), another in Burgundy (possibly Gilbert the Universal,
bishop of London [11281134]), a third in Angers (Ulger, bishop of An-
gers [11251148]), a fourth in Bourges (possibly Joscelin of Vierzy, bishop
of Soissons [11261152]), are far from accurate summaries of their teach-

ing. He attributes to them a range of opinions to make them look absurd.
He accuses Alberic of Reims of holding that those who lived before the
incarnation were saved without knowledge of the Savior, as well as of
claiming (as Abelard also reports in the Historia calamitatum) that God
could beget himself. Abelard is particularly opposed to thinkers who de-
scribe divine attributes as having a separate existence from the divine
persons (presumably relying on a strictly literal application of Priscians
denition that a name signies a substance with a quality).21 This attempt
to ridicule potential critics invited a hostile response from those not per-
suaded by his claims.
This introduction to the diversity of contemporary opinions about
Christian doctrine leads to an important theological argument, now
stripped down to a few key essentials. The divine nature is beyond any
division or part, and exists outside of any of the standard categories of
substance and accident as dened by Aristotle and Porphyry.22 Human
categories invariably change their normal meaning when applied to God.
Instead of addressing Roscelin as a wormlike dialectician, Abelard now
asks brothers and wordy friends to consider the way words change their
meaning when applied to God through using metaphor and analogy.23
Whereas in previous versions of the Theologia he had devoted much at-
tention to some half dozen modes of identity and difference, he now
simplies his discussion, considering just three modes of identity: essence,
number, and attribute or denition. Something can be single in essence,
yet multiple in attribute. The term persona itself has many meanings. In
grammar, the difference between a rst, second, and third person is one
of attributewhether someone speaks, is spoken to, or is spoken about.
There is thus nothing unusual about speaking of multiple personae in
relation to God if God is understood to have multiple attributes.
The central analogy formulated in the Theologia Scholarium is that
the Trinity is like a bronze seal with three attributes: it is made of bronze;
it has a form into which it is shaped, making it able to seal; it has the
property of sealing, when applied to wax. The image is much tighter than
anything he had suggested in previous versions of the Theologia, although
the basic analogical principle is the same. It provides a way of visualizing
his familiar theme that the relationship between divine power and wisdom
(or the power of discernment) is like that between genus and species.
Abelard always emphasizes that this is only an analogy to help understand
the meaning of the words Father and Son. While his critics might
argue that a species is inferior to its genus and therefore implies a dimin-
ished status to God the Son, his point is that a species is not a thing in
itself, existing independently from a genus, but rather depends on genus

as one concept depends on another.24 He sees the traditional image of
the Trinity as like the sun emitting heat and light (conventionally attrib-
uted to Augustine, but which he suggests was Platonic in inspiration) as
inadequate because the three elements do not share a common substance.
Another traditional image of the Trinity as a spring, river, and pool, of-
fered by Augustine and put forward by St. Anselm in argument against
Roscelin, was inadequate for similar reasons.
This criticism of existing analogies leads into one of the most contro-
versial claims in the Theologia Scholarium: that the goodness of the Holy
Spirit is not any power or wisdom but rather is the love (caritas) that
emanates from both Father and Son and therefore has nothing to do with
the attribute of power. Ever attentive to the correctness of denitions,
Abelard argues that the Holy Spirit does not proceed out of (ex) the
substance of the Father or the Son but rather from (de) the Father and
the Son.25 To an unsympathetic critic, Abelard might seem to undermine
the full divinity of all three persons of the Trinity. His argument is that
omnipotence should not be seen as the overriding characteristic of Gods
nature. Gods power is the potentiality on which everything depends. His
love, the Holy Spirit, is both Gods affect or disposition and his effect or
consequence on creation. Gods action is never arbitrary, but is ethical in
its very foundation.
Abelard considers the analogy of the bronze seal to be particularly
appropriate because the seal imprints its image on wax, in the same way
as the Holy Spirit imprints the divine image on creation. While the seal
(strictly what is able to seal, the sigillabile) is cast out of bronze into a
particular shape, as the Son is generated from the Father, it has the prop-
erty of sealing, the Holy Spirit. The analogy provides more than a clever
way of explaining how three persons coexist in a single substance. It
emphasizes the Holy Spirit as the medium through which humanity is
shaped and healed by divine goodness. Augustine had placed prime focus
on the Son as the means through which human salvation is effected.
He saw the Holy Spirit as proceeding not from the Father alone, as in
the traditional orthodox version of the Nicene Creed, but from both the
Father and the Son. The Latin form of the Nicene Creed included
the controversial lioque clause in the late sixth century to incorporate
the Augustinian perspective. Abelard, as a Latin Christian, does not deny
that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but he argues
that it is an integral part of the divine nature, relating God to creation,
rather than simply the third person of the Trinity. He draws on his un-
derstanding that words do not signify specic entities or things, but rather
convey distinct attributes, to make sense of teaching about the specically

Christian terms of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
While Abelard simplies his potentially controversial argument about
the relationship between Father and Son, he retains from the Theologia
Christiana his explanation of how the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the
Father and Son. He is particularly careful to examine the wording of the
major denitions of belief issued by the ecumenical councils. Whereas St.
Anselm had adopted a more critical attitude toward the Greek insistence
that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, Abelard is con-
sciously irenic in arguing that the traditional prohibition against changing
the denition of belief applies to faith itself, not to the particular words
being used. Just because one creed differs from another, it does not nec-
essarily contradict another. Similarly, the Latin understanding of the Trin-
ity may be worded differently from the Greek denition, but this does not
mean that there is any fundamental difference in sense. Abelards expla-
nation and analysis of the wording of the ecumenical councils would be
particularly helpful to Anselm of Havelberg, who drew on Abelards Theo-
logia to construct his Antikeimenon or Dialogues, which were inspired by
discussions he had had with a prominent Byzantine ecclesiastic, Arch-
bishop Nichetes of Nicomedia, in 1136.26 Anselm of Havelberg, who suc-
ceeded Norbert as archbishop of Magdeburg in 1134, was an enthusiastic
admirer of diversity in the Church. His praise for Bernard of Clairvaux
did not stop him from using Abelards Theologia to explore common
ground between Latin and Greek traditions.
The most signicant new development in the Theologia Scholarium
occurs in its third book, which explores the character of Gods nature and
attributes beyond the more specic question of the denition of the Trin-
ity. In the last book of the Theologia Christiana, Abelard had started to
write about the underlying unity of God and his argument that God could
not act differently from the way he did, but had never been able to
complete his discussion. In the De sacramentis, Hugh explicitly rejects the
opinion of those who glory in their opinion, who think that they can
discuss divine works by reason, and conne Gods power within mea-
sure.27 Hugh is aware of the view that the world could not be made
better, but holds that while God cannot be better than he is, he has the
power to make the world better than he has made it. Abelard counters
the conventional image of God as a supremely omnipotent ruler by ref-
erence to a range of proof texts. In the Theologia Christiana, Abelard had
acknowledged passages such as Matthew 26:53 (Do you not think that
I could ask my Father and he would provide me with more than a dozen
legions of angels?) presents serious difculties.28 By the time that he had
completed the Theologia Scholarium, he was much more condent of his

argument. His theme, anticipated in the Collationes and the commentary
on Romans, is that evil, although wrong in itself, can have a place in the
divine plan. This theological acceptance of wrongdoing is also implicit in
the Historia calamitatum, in which suffering and misfortune are explained
as part of divine providence. When Abelard wrote the Theologia Christiana
in the 1120s, he frequently expressed anger with the way other Christians
behaved in the name of their religion, a tone of impatience that does not
disappear in the Theologia Scholarium. Yet the implication of the argu-
ment in its nal book is that God cannot do other than he does, and
that the world cannot be made differently from the way it is. He has to
conclude that there must indeed be a reason for God giving to humanity
the capacity to sin.29
Abelard resolves the familiar problem of whether divine providence
implies that all things happen by necessity by pointing out that someone
capable of being saved by God is not the same as God is able to save
someone who is not to be saved at all, since the former statement refers
to a human possibility while the latter makes a statement about possibility
in God.30 Without identifying his critic by name, he effectively counters
the claims of Hugh of St.-Victor, made in both the Sententie and the De
sacramentis, that he is undercutting divine power by arguing that we pay
attention to the way words are used. Unlike Hugh, Abelard draws on a
long tradition of reecting on modal operators such as it is possible that
to point out that many theological paradoxes can be resolved by consid-
ering their correct usage. Statements about God ceasing from work on
the Sabbath or descending into the Virgin are gures of speech that do
not imply any change to the divine nature.31 He refers back to his Gram-
matica (unfortunately lost) for further discussion of how the category of
spirit is never subject to the category of place. When God is said to
come into the Virgin, this really means that he humbles himself to take
human nature.32 When God is said to become man in Christ, there is no
change in his nature, as the divine nature and human nature are quite
different in character, although they become one person.
Abelards discussion of divine wisdom in the third book picks up on a
question that he had already touched on, namely, how Gods providence
can be reconciled with free will. The same principle operates in his dis-
cussion of divine power: that what may come about through free will from
a human perspective is known to God but does not thereby come about
through necessity. Events that we cannot anticipate, such as eclipses of
the sun and the moon, may still operate for reasons that we do not un-
derstand. To investigate the reasons behind natural phenomena does not
limit Gods power, as what is being examined relates to creation, not to

God.33 Abelard effectively argues that claims made about both human
freedom and the underlying rules that govern our behavior do not dimin-
ish divine authority and wisdom, which remain at an utterly different
level. He argues further that Aristotelian logic helps us to clarify the false
claim that if God foresees all things, all things must operate by necessity.
His message is not so much about God himself as about our need to pay
attention to the words, even very small conjunctions, that we use. Rather
than reducing theology to logic, he argues that Aristotle can teach us not
to confuse logical arguments with theological truths that are beyond def-
inition. The capacity to exercise free will is a precious feature of human
nature that is not at odds with providence. These were issues Boethius
had attempted to resolve in the nal book of his Consolation of Philosophy.
Abelard, who had criticized Boethius so often in the past for being mis-
guided in his opinions, presents his own resolution of the issue by going
back to what he thinks Aristotle is saying in his discussion in the Perier-
meneias about the meaning of words and phrases. Whereas Boethius seeks
to free himself from the chain of worldly existence by contemplating
philosophy as a transcendent ideal, Abelard emphasizes that in the nal
analysis God could not have made creation any differently from what it
is. By becoming aware of the limitations of all talk about God, we can
gain deeper understanding of both freedom and necessity.
The third book of the Theologia Scholarium is not the most clearly
organized of his writings. Its internal organization is not as careful as the
second book (subject to so much redrafting), and does not have the ow
of ideas provided by the dialogues in the Collationes. The third books
nal section about divine goodness is much briefer than the sections on
power and wisdom, although it contains some of the most moving reec-
tions in the entire Theologia. He returns to the perennial question of all
theodicy, namely, how it is that we can reconcile suffering and evil with
the goodness of God. His answer is fundamentally the same as that which
he articulates in a more personalized context in the Historia calamitatum,
that the most difcult experiences can have a role to play within Gods
providence. In her response to that account, Heloise had accused God of
cruelty for allowing events to have taken the turn they did. Abelard re-
sponds by arguing that his punishment was part of Gods redemptive strat-
egy. In the third book of the Theologia Scholarium, he is still concerned
with the same fundamental paradox: How can we reconcile evil and suf-
fering with the goodness of God? In earlier versions of the Theologia, he
had emphasized reason and rationality but had steered away from reect-
ing on suffering in the world. Now he reects on the paradox that out of
human feeling we often act in ways that run counter to reason. Why does
Rachel weep over her children or a son grieve the death of his father
when death is inevitable? The motive behind such grief is born out of
the best of emotions, but is ultimately without reason.
Abelards response is not to deny that we should grieve or mourn. We
are instructed to pray for the dead and for the salvation of those that will
not be saved, even though this might seem to run counter to reason. He
resolves the dilemma by reecting that ultimately God orders for the good
those things that are bad and contrary to reason so that it is even a good
thing for evil to exist, and whatever happens, it is good to happen. Even
more of a paradox is what this means for sin. The text of Matthew 18:7
(It is necessary that there should come obstacles, but woe to him through
whom obstacle comes) crystallizes his sense that suffering may have a
place, even though causing suffering for its own sake is always wrong. It
may even be good for sin to exist, even though sin is never good in itself.
He concludes by reecting on the biggest paradox of all: It was ultimately
a good thing for Christ, an innocent, to have been killed by wicked men.
This certainly could not have happened without sin, so that sinning
against him was a good thing, even though the sin itself cannot be good
at all.34
The Theologia Scholarium and the

Sentence Collections
There are no rm grounds for thinking that Abelard intended to take the
Theologia Scholarium further than discussion about the divine nature,
the strict subject matter of theologia, as distinct from benets that ow
from God.35 Although he included denitions of charity and sacraments
at the outset of his new introductionlifting them from the beginning
of his sententie on faith, the sacraments, and charityhe gives no indi-
cation that he was going to cover these topics in the Theologia. In the
commentary on Romans, he refers not only to the Theologia but to two
other treatises that he intended to write: an Anthropologia, dealing with
the incarnation of God in human form (perhaps never written), and his
Ethica, a treatise that has survived under the title Scito teipsum (Know
yourself) and deals with caritas as the foundation of all morality.
In his oral teaching, Abelard had formulated responses to all the major
questions about faith, the sacraments, and charity that he had outlined
in the Sic et non. They are recorded in collections of his sententie, taken
down by students probably in the same way as Laurence of Durham took
down the Sententie de divinitate from the teaching of Hugh of St.-Victor.

The Sententie Petri Abaelardi survive in three different recensions, perhaps
expanded by a disciple with quotations from Abelards Theologia Scholar-
ium. The Sententie Parisienses are more likely to represent an actual report
of Abelards lectures, in which some points are expanded upon, while
other sections (such as on the sacraments) follow the Sententie Petri Abae-
lardi more closely.36 While these sentence collections are not as carefully
written as Abelards treatises, they provide a concise summary of his teach-
ing on a wide range of questions.
In particular they bring together the key arguments about redemption
introduced within the commentary on Romans. Just as Abelard empha-
sizes the goodness and love of Gods nature, manifest in the Holy Spirit,
so he presents love as the foundation of Gods taking human form in
Christ to free us from the yoke of sin (not from any legitimate power of
the devil). God has allowed humans to sin, without ever consigning hu-
manity to the devil. Going much further than St. Anselm in the Cur
Deus homo, he argues that God took human form not to be the perfect
God-man dying in place of sinful humanity, but so as to redeem humanity
by the example of his love, manifest in Christs life and preaching. He
also argues that most statements about the incarnation, such as that God
is man and that Christ is the son of God, are impropria, or improper, and
not literally accurate. An improper expression is one in which a part is
taken for the whole. To say that Christ is God and man means that the
Word of God has humanity. These ideas about Christology, preserved
only as sententie, provoked enormous discussion in the schools over sub-
sequent decades. Abelard does not deny the divinity of Christ, but argues
that the divine nature is of quite a different order from human nature,
and that Christ is a single person, both human and divine.37 He accuses
Augustine of effectively denying Christ his full humanity by interpreting
the prayer Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me as a state-
ment made not by Christ himself but by his weaker limbs. Abelard reads
the passion narrative as an account not of a God-man above suffering but
of a fully human person who is clearly separate from God the Father. This
shift in thinking parallels a move in contemporary art to dwell on the
suffering of Jesus rather than on his transcendent wisdom. In a phrase
that some subsequent critics would consider blasphemous, he considers
that Christ assumed true humanity. He is particularly critical of Hilary
of Poitiers for denying that Christ felt real pain when his hands and feet
were nailed to the cross.38 Christ was no different from the martyrs or
saints in the way he felt suffering. When this suffering is endured for the
sake of the love of God, it is redemptive. In one manuscript of the Sen-
tentie, Abelard is reported as making a remark that is very similar to a

line in the commentary on Romans: and I may say that more usefulness
followed from the disobedience of Judas than from the obedience of Pe-
ter.39 There was a rational reason for both Peter obeying and Judas dis-
obeying. God does not arrange evil, but he allows it to exist as part of
the gift of free will given to humanity.
If there had been a weakness in his early theology, it was to emphasize
the goodness and rationality of God without dwelling sufciently on the
human condition. By developing his thinking about the true humanity of
the incarnate Christ, Abelard hoped to address the question of how suf-
fering in this life could nd a purpose. These were ideas he rst developed
in those letters and sermons addressed to Heloise and the nuns of the
Paraclete. If he had ever completed the Anthropologia that he promised
in the commentary on Romans, it would have been a work of great bold-
ness, if the ideas hinted at in the Sententie are any guide. Yet even if these
ideas were only raised in public teaching and not in any denitive treatise,
they did provoke controversy. Abelard emphasized that Christ was sepa-
rate from his Father, that his knowledge as a man was different from that
of the Word of God. In death, Christs soul was separated from his body.
According to a remark in another sentence collection, picked up by Ber-
nard of Clairvaux, Abelard seemed to say that Christ descended into hell
only through his power (per potentiam tantum). Bernard did not understand
the broader context of this remark, that the soul does not experience
physical movement like the body but rather is itself the life of the body,
giving it movement. God is everywhere through his power or potency,
because he can be everywhere. In death, Christs soul, the Word of God,
was separated from his body but existed everywhere, potentially. In res-
urrection, body and soul came together.
Abelard presents the sacraments in his Sententie as belonging to the
benets owing from God after the supreme benet, that is, the incar-
nation. Given that Hugh of St.-Victor accords the sacraments such an
important place in the economy of salvation, it is fascinating to see Ab-
elards resolution of the subject. His discussion synthesizes themes that he
had already developed in his sermons and in the Collationes. He an-
nounces one point of viewnamely, that some say that circumcision and
baptism differ in that the latter opens the way to heaven, unlike the
formerbut then argues that baptism itself does not do this, but rather
Christs passion associated with baptism. Hugh prefers to speak of the
Word of God rather than of Christs passion as what gives efcacy to the
sacrament.40 Abelard sees the Eucharist as embodying the love that Christ
showed to us and that draws us to him. Again he emphasizes that its

efcacy lies in its inner purpose rather than its external form.41
In the third part of the Sententie, Abelard deals with love, the foun-
dation of all ethical behavior, and comments on issues that he had already
identied in the last part of the Sic et non. What matters is not any act
of charity, but the purpose behind all charity. If charity is present in the
human heart, it can excuse even the gravest weaknesses, as in the case
of David, notorious for his human frailty: If, vanquished by some weak-
ness, I should fall into fornication, murder, or some other sin, while I
have Christ as a foundation, it is not consequently true that I do not love
God. . . . For when David sinned, he had charity because he had Christ
as a foundation.42 Abelard identies with the gure of David in his pro-
pensity for illicit love. Davids social transgression in having Uriah killed
so that he could seduce Bathsheba does not mean that he did not love
God, even if his sexual intercourse with Bathsheba was wrong, since he
had love for his neighbor. Hugh of St.-Victor clearly alludes to these
arguments of Abelard in his De sacramentis: Certain men wish to say so
much about charity that they begin to praise charity contrary to truth,
and yet there is no praise of charity where there is injury of the truth.
They say that charity is such and has such great virtue that without it all
the other virtues, although in some way they can exist inclined toward
good according to the affection of nature, cannot, however, have the
merit of eternal recompense.43 While Hugh acknowledges that these ar-
guments about charity form a good beginning, he worries that such bold
claims are undercut by the reality that often there is no real charity from
the outset. Hugh fears that this argument could excuse a multitude of
sins, not least concupiscence, and insists that there is a sharp division
between evil and good people. Love will certainly last forever, but when
people start to act wrongly toward one another, they lose what charity
may have been in their hearts. Hughs lengthy and impassioned discussion,
in which he attempts to demonstrate to his unidentied critic that it is
nave to assume that love is present in the hearts of those who sin, is a
moving attempt to identify the limitations of Abelards analysis of love.
He knows the argument that the spirit of the Lord did not recede from
David (1 Kings 16:13) but does not consider that this was a license for
David to act in any way he wished.44
Hughs arguments allow us to perceive exactly how important was Ab-
elards interest in restoring caritas to a central position as a basis for both
theology and ethics. Cautious critics, such as Hugh himself, were troubled
that such a theology had the potential to legitimize behavior that trans-
gressed the conventional rules of society. Hugh insists that to claim that
love is present in someones heart cannot excuse other faults. Abelards
contrast between being motivated by either a wrong will or by caritas
strikes Hugh as simplistic. It does not seem enough to say that because
one has love in ones heart, one cannot sin.
In the Scito teipsum, Abelard renes his argument by explaining that
sin is not in itself a wrong will, but is rather consent to that wrong will
in deliberate contempt of God. His discussion in the Collationes had fo-
cused around the question of what constituted virtue, and its foundation
in caritas. Only when Abelard applies himself to the distinction between
vice and sin does he rene his thinking about what actually constitutes
sin. Whereas previously he had imitated Augustine in drawing a sharply
dened boundary between mala voluntas and bona voluntas that conformed
to the divine voluntas, Abelard now deepens the psychological aspect of
wrong will. Even in his Sententie, Abelard had taught that sin was de-
ned by the will to anger, the will to debauchery, that there were many
religious who sinned in their will rather than in their action, and that
we are rewarded for having a good will.45 Hugh of St.-Victor is familiar
with the arguments, implicit in the Sententie of Abelard, that good will
alone is sufcient to earn merit. Hugh presents his argument in the form
of discussion with a person who holds opinions very close to those of
Abelard: But you say: If to wish alone is merit and if the merit of man
consists of will alone, why then does he do the work? I have the will and
that sufces for me.46
In the Scito teipsum, Abelard acknowledges that some might argue that
the will to do a bad deed is a sin that makes us guilty before God, but
then he suggests examples in which the distinction between a good and
a bad will is blurred: An innocent man persecuted by his master who
eventually kills his master out of a desire to escape death may not have
been motivated by a wrong will, but he does sin insofar as he has con-
sented to a killing.47 By distinguishing between a wrong will and consent
to that wrong will in deliberate contempt of God, Abelard renes the
position that he had maintained in his Sententie. He was not the rst
thinker to identify consent to sin as a necessary element in doing wrong.
Hugh had commented in passing that an act of sin is performed with
consent alone, and had attached great importance to the consent of both
parties in creating a legitimate marriage.48 Abelards originality in the Scito
teipsum lay rather in reecting that a wrong will was not necessarily wrong
in itself, as he had assumed in his earlier writing. Very telling is the
example he gives of seeing a woman and having the mind affected by
carnal thoughts that incite him to intercourse. Whereas in the Historia
calamitatum Abelard had been quite clear that he had fallen into sin and
that castration mercifully healed him of this temptation, he now claries
the point that he had made to Heloise when she complained that she
was still troubled by carnal thoughts after all these years: Having a wrong
will is not necessarily wrong in itself; what matters is that we do not
consent to that wrong will.49
Abelard is aware that his argument that the actual doing of a sin adds
nothing to guilt will be controversial. It is unreasonable, however, to
assume that any natural pleasure, such as intercourse, is a sin in itself.
For example, if someone compels a religious who is bound in chains to
lie between women, and if he is brought to pleasure, not by his consent
but by the softness of the bed and through the contact of the women
beside him, who may presume to call this pleasure, made necessary by
nature, a fault?50 Abelard here internalizes the boundary between love
and transgression much more than he had done in the Historia calamita-
tum. Many of his examples in the Scito teipsum are explicitly sexual: It
is not a sin to lust after anothers wife or to lie with her, but rather to
consent to this lust or action. This is a position very different from that
of Hugh of St.-Victor, for whom the sexual act is without sin only if it
takes place within marriage and does not involve lust.51
Abelard takes much further the emphasis of Heloise that external
works are not good or bad in themselves. What matters is the intention
behind those actions. Here he extends this principle to the experience of
temptation, such as desire for good food, a sinful longing only if consented
to, in contempt of God. This psychological angle is not present in the
Collationes, in which the discussion is so much more about virtue than
about the distinction between vice and sin. The issues of transgression
that he raises are not simply sexual. Why should a woman who acciden-
tally smothers her child be guilty of murder and required to do penance?52
Whereas in the Historia calamitatum, as also in the third book of the
Theologia Scholarium, he had concentrated on the ultimate goodness of
all that God permitted to happen, he is here more aware of the discrep-
ancy between external judgments made by ecclesiastical authority and
justice in the eye of God. Divine punishment is not necessarily the same
as that meted out by human justice.53 In his critique of the notion of
good works, Abelard extends his discussion in the commentary of Romans
about the priority of faith over works. In the debate of the philosopher
with the Jew in the Collationes, he had already laid out the principle that
the performance of external action (most specically circumcision, the
action discussed by Paul) was not as important as the ideal of love out of
which that observance must spring. While he had taken this theme fur-
ther in discussing the Epistle to the Romans, he now extends this to a

general principle that it is inner intention that deserves reward, not ex-
ternal action. In the Dialectica, concerned with language rather than
ethics, Abelard had laid the foundations for arguing that the meaning of
a sentence could not be dened as an objective thing but rather had to
be understood in terms of the intention of the speaker. Only in the 1130s,
after he had renewed contact with Heloise, did Abelard transfer this in-
sight to behavior.
His argument that as sin has to involve contempt of God no one can
sin simply through ignorance does not just mean that those who crucied
Christ were not automatically guilty of sin. For those who do not know
Christ, and therefore reject the Christian faith because they believe it to
be contrary to God, what contempt of God have they in what they do
for Gods sake and therefore think they do well?54 While Abelard had
argued in the Theologia that pagan philosophers had had insight into di-
vine truth, he is now more explicit in claiming that non-Christians are
not guilty by virtue of their lack of belief. His authority is none other
than the prayer of Christ, Forgive them, for they do not know what they
do (Luke 23:34), a passage he had already raised in passing in his com-
mentary on Romans.55 While there are passages in Scripture that speak
of sins in terms of specic actions, Abelard holds that what is sinful is
their consent to those actions. Such an analysis of sin, largely absent from
Hugh of St.-Victors De sacramentis, signicantly modies traditional pen-
itential theory. Whereas in the Collationes Abelard speaks about virtue as
a philosophical principle, in the Scito teipsum he relates these principles
to the words of Christ himself. Cornelius, who did not learn about Christ
until Peter spoke to him, is the archetypal upright pagan, drawn by natural
law to the love of God but who could not be counted among the faithful
until he had learned about Christ.56 The situation of these upright pagans
is like that of unbaptized children who have done no wrong. Augustine
had formulated an inuential distinction between venial and mortal
sins as a way of recognizing that some sinful actions are not going to stand
in the way of salvation. Abelard is impatient with those who build ex-
cessively on this distinction, as the essence of any sin lies in transgressing
the commandment to love, the essence and fulllment of the law.
Heloises response to the Historia calamitatum had been to argue that
she could not feel true repentance (penitentia) for their past relationship,
as if it were something sinful. Sympathetic to the idea that penitentia
should not be external penance but an interior disposition, Abelard argues
in the Scito teipsum that it must grow out of the love of God rather than
out of fear of the possibility of damnation. He is more critical than in
any of his earlier writings of the potential hypocrisy of many contemporary

acts of penance. While these are themes that Heloise complained a great
deal about in her third letter to Abelard, his response had initially been
to reect on the foundations of true morality rather than on questioning
the necessity for physical penance. Now he turns his attention to the
limitations of thinking that alms giving can make amends for selsh and
violent behavior.57 He recalls a quotation attributed to Jerome (in fact by
Pelagius), emphasizing that Adam was not such a great sinner because he
had not sinned before, in order to complain that many of his contem-
poraries were far worse sinners than Adam.58 The moral transgressions
identied by Abelard as worthy of eternal punishment are not sexual but
relate to exploitation of others: seizure of property by the rich, and the
greed of clergy who demand money for celebrating masses.59 True repen-
tance comes from the love of God rather than from fear of damnation.
Hugh of St.-Victor, by contrast, has a more traditional sense of peni-
tentia as actual practice or penance, arguing that exterior penance is nec-
essary for interior contrition of the heart, or what we call repentance. He
is just as insistent as Abelard on the importance of inner contrition, but
holds that anyone who has not completed sufcient bodily penance still
needs to be puried through purgatorial re.60 This contrasts with passing
comments in the Collationes and the commentary on Romans that the
greatest purgation any soul could experience was death. In the Scito teip-
sum, Abelard seems to nuance his position, as he argues that true peni-
tentia consists in a conscious contrition of the heart that reconciles us
fully to God, but he acknowledges that there are those who must still
endure purgatorial punishment after death, even though they will be rec-
onciled to God.61 This was increasingly a contested issue by the mid-
twelfth century. Bernard of Clairvaux found particularly objectionable the
denial of purgatorial re, attributed to Cathar heretics in the Rhineland.
Their attitudes may have reected wider distrust of ofcial penitential
systems as well as of the usefulness of praying for the dead to be freed
from purgatory.
Abelard seems to be aware of the radical position of those who reject
any external structure of confessing sins, an issue on which he had laid
out opposing arguments in question 151 of the Sic et non. His own attitude
is in keeping with his broader attitude to sacraments in general. He ob-
serves that there is a practical advantage to confessing ones sins, in that
individuals can be helped by the process, even though the act of speaking
words does not in itself establish that true repentance is taking place.
Priests have a positive role in hearing confession and in helping the faith-
ful turn to true repentance. The problem lies not with the mandate given
to priests to forgive sins but with their failure to appreciate their mandate
and to live up to the standards expected of them. Public confession was
not always necessary, as shown by the example of Peter weeping when he
realized that he had denied Christ. Given the weakness of the young
Church, it was prudent for him not to make a public confession of his
sin until his virtue had been proven.62 His objections are to those many
prelates who are neither religious nor discreet and are liable to disclose
the sins of those who confess, so that to confess to them seems not only
useless but also ruinous.63 Abelard is aware that he is walking a ne line,
in that he does not wish to criticize the teaching of those who live badly.
They are, however, blind leading the blind, and as dangerous as those
who teach Christian theology without understanding their subject. In crit-
icizing the clergy in general, Abelard could easily be seen as promoting
distrust of ecclesiastical authority. He is outspoken in criticizing not just
priests but bishops who shamelessly relax penances on solemn occasions
like the dedication of a Church or an altar in return for nancial contri-
butions.64 The theoretical question he has to face is whether bishops, as
heirs to the apostles, still have been entrusted with the power to bind
and loose, in other words, to issue a sentence of excommunication on
those they deem to be outside the community of the faithful. From his
reading of comments of Jerome, Origen, Augustine, and Gregory the
Great on the key text of Matthew about the power of binding and loosing,
he concludes that Christ gave this power to the apostles personally and
not to all bishops in general.65 In a very vivid way, Abelards philosophical
rejection of the idea that individuals might participate in a common uni-
versal thing is here transferred to the community of bishops, who have
to be judged as no more than individuals. This does not mean that anyone
who has been excommunicated should stubbornly resist the will of a
bishop, as this might incur a fault that had not existed earlier. Abelard
closes this discussion to the rst book of the Scito teipsum by insisting that
he does not wish to be contentious in these matters, only to offer his own
opinion. At the same time, he laments the extent to which those prom-
inent in the name of religion have been driven to envy and hatred.66
These ideas can have a dangerously anticlerical ring to them if they
are employed in a public context outside the careful connes of academic
debate. While Abelard does not voice them for political ends, he cannot
avoid articulating his frustration with the way the institutional Church
can distort a simple religious message by being more concerned with
power and authority than ideals of service. His ideas about goodness and
love as the foundation of all true ethics, of the work of redemption, and
indeed of the Holy Spirit itself, may have interested Heloise and the nuns
of the Paraclete, as they did many of his admirers. Nonetheless, they could
also be construed as potentially subversive by those who felt that he was
undermining the structure of orthodox Christian faith and the authority
of the Church.
11
Accusations of Heresy
T he death of Louis VI on August 1, 1137, marked the end of an era.

Abelards rise to prominence as a teacher had coincided with the
reign of a monarch who had acceded to the throne in 1108. Abelard had
then beneted from the support of Stephen of Garlande, royal chancellor,
archdeacon of Paris, and dean of the Abbey of Ste.-Genevie`ve. With the
accession to the throne of Louis VII, then just seventeen years old and a
protege of Suger of St.-Denis, and the retirement from court of Stephen
of Garlande, Abelards position became more vulnerable. The young Louis
had been anointed as heir apparent at Reims by none other than Pope
Innocent II after the accidental death of the original heir apparent, Philip.
Suger himself had supervised the negotiations that led to the marriage of
the young Louis with Eleanor, daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine, thus
bringing into the French kingdom a vast region with its own language
and distinct cultural identity.1 There was an expectation among abbots
such as William of St.-Thierry and Bernard of Clairvaux that the values
of reformed monasticism would be given new authority and inuence
within the Church, after decades of schism and internal conict. They
hoped that order would be imposed both on the Church and on educa-
tional institutions within the kingdom. Above all, Suger worked hard to
promote St.-Denis as the leading abbey of the realm. He started writing
an account of the life of Louis VI for the benet of the young king in
which he marginalized the contribution of Stephen of Garlande toward
shaping the Capetian kingdom. Having acquired the Abbey of Argenteuil
226
accusations of heresy 227
in 1129, Suger now intensied his effort to rebuild the abbey church of
St.-Denis so as to reinforce his vision of the abbey as the true guardian
of the sacred traditions of France.
Another signicant turning point was provided by the death of Ana-
cletus II on January 25, 1138, putting an end to an eight-year schism
within the Church. While Anacletus II had been elected on February 14,
1130, by a majority of the Roman cardinals, and with signicant support
from the city of Rome (where his brother, Jordan, was a prominent gure),
a rival faction, headed by Bernards friend and fellow Cistercian, Cardinal
Haimeric, had proclaimed Innocent II as pope.2 Unable to win the support
of the city of Rome, Innocent and his followers were forced into exile in
France, where they found strong support from Bernard of Clairvaux, who
in turn played a key role in getting Innocents claim to the papacy rec-
ognized by Louis VI of France and Lothar III of Germany. The vast duchy
of Aquitaine, embracing cities as far apart as Poitiers and Bordeaux, was
one of those regions that had preferred to recognize Anacletus. Bernard,
who traveled to Italy in 1138 to assist Innocent II assert his authority,
had now become a major gure in ecclesiastical politics. At the Second
Lateran Council, held in April 1139, Innocent excommunicated all those
clerics who had been ordained by Anacletus and other schismatics and
heretics with a severity that even surprised Bernard. The council, to
which representatives from all over Christendom were summoned, con-
demned as abuses a range of ecclesiastical practices, such as simony and
clerical concubinage. It also introduced certain other measures that had
not been mentioned in earlier legislation, such as condemnation of monks
and nuns singing in the same choir, and of women calling themselves
nuns without following the established rules of either Augustine, Basil,
or Benedict.3 These prohibitions signal increasing ofcial alarm at new
developments in the interpretation of the religious life.
Unlike Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard was ill at ease within the
hothouse of ecclesiastical politics. Less diplomatic than Heloise in his
relationships with senior churchmen, Abelard tended to complain about
their worldliness without appreciating the full complexity of the political
issues with which they were concerned. This broad-brush manner aggra-
vated his critics, above all Suger of St.-Denis and Bernard of Clairvaux,
a former protege of William of Champeaux. They perceived Abelard as a
renegade monk, more at home at the schools of Ste.-Genevie`ve than in
a monastery. They remembered him as a dialectician and a secular cleric,
but did not understand his vision of dialectic as only part of a broader
synthesis of secular and sacred wisdom, underpinned by devotion to the
Holy Spirit. In the intensely polarized years of 11401141, the criticisms
of his theological arguments made by teachers such as Hugh of St.-Victor

turned into accusations of heresy. In particular, Bernard of Clairvaux
picked up and publicized accusations initially made by William of St.-
Thierry, that Abelard seemed to question the full omnipotence of God
the Son and God the Holy Spirit, and the doctrine that God became
man to free humanity from the yoke of the devil. These accusations would
come to a head at the Council of Sens, held on May 25, 1141.
By 1137, Abelard was no longer the sole star of the Montagne Ste.-
Genevie`ve, just as Hugh of St.-Victor was no longer the only represen-
tative of orthodox clerical tradition. Certainly, Abelard and Hugh were
revered as the two great luminaries of the Latin world, to use the words
of Richard of Poitiers.4 Yet many more masters were beginning to nd
employment at the schools of the Montagne Ste.-Genevie`ve, making Paris
surpass Reims and Laon as an educational center. The dynamism of its
intellectual life is well attested by John of Salisbury, who arrived there as
a young student in 1136. John followed Abelards lectures on dialectic for
as long as he could, until Abelard left the city, perhaps late in 1137 (for
how long is not certain).5 John then studied dialectic under two very
different teachers, Alberic of Paris (not to be confused with Alberic of
Reims), a strident critic of the nominalist sect and gifted in posing
difcult questions, and Robert of Melun, who was more sympathetic to
the ideas of Abelard about language and theology, and who John thought
was brilliant at nding concise solutions. Arguments between Alberic of
Paris and Abelard on dialectic are frequently mentioned in student notes
from the late 1130s.6 By this time, Abelards teaching on logic, developed
almost twenty years earlier, was beginning to seem rather dated, as it did
not make extensive use of Aristotles Sophistical Refutations and Prior An-
alytics, translations of which were beginning to circulate in the schools.
Younger teachers such as Adam of Balsham (nicknamed Parvipontanus
because he taught on the little bridge between the Ile-de-la-Cite and the
Left Bank) were becoming specialists in dialectic. There were fewer mas-
ters who taught both the liberal arts and theology.
Writing in the late 1150s, John of Salisbury lamented the contempo-
rary tendency toward ever greater specialization in teaching, and would
later look back on his studies between 1136 and 1148 as a remarkable
period, which he was privileged to live through. The gure who perhaps
impressed him the most was Gilbert of Poitiers, who had studied under
both Bernard of Chartres and Anselm of Laon sometime before 1117 but
then taught at Chartres until around 1137. Gilbert skillfully drew on both
traditions of learning, composing commentaries on the Psalter and the
Pauline Epistles in the tradition of Anselm of Laon, but developing a
theological system based around commentary on the Opuscula sacra of

Boethius.7 Like Abelard, Gilbert taught both logic and theology as a uni-
ed vision of learning, but in a way that emphasized continuity rather
than rupture with the achievement of past thinkers. (Thierry of Chartres,
Bernards brother, may also have moved from Chartres to Paris during the
1130s.8) When John came back to Paris after three years of studying under
William of Conches, he attached himself to Gilbert, who taught both
logic and theology, perhaps at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame, until
Gilbert himself was appointed bishop of Poitiers in 1142.
Both Thierry of Chartres and Gilbert preferred to base their philo-
sophical theology on the pithy tracts of Boethius. Thierry, learned in
many Platonic and scientic texts (including the Celestial Hierarchy, at-
tributed to Denis the Areopagite), used Boethiuss tracts on the Trinity
as a basis for a vision of God and the universe as a series of Platonic
forms emanating from a sublime unity. Like William of Conches, he
wished to bring together a theory of the natural world (physica) with that
of theology.9 Gilbert of Poitiers based his theology around a key meta-
physical distinction, between a subject (id quod est) and the form by which
it exists (id quo est), extending this to the argument that divinitas was
distinct from deus. Not open to easy popularization by those unfamiliar
with his arguments, Gilberts theological system was a brilliant but dense
synthesis of Aristotelian and Platonic traditions. As Otto of Freising ob-
served, whereas Abelard was headstrong in criticism of his teachers, Gil-
bert anchored his teaching on respect for his elders.10 Gilbert disapproved
of Abelards attribution of power, wisdom, and goodness to the three per-
sons, as if they were quite separate from each other.11
Abelard differed from Gilbert in attempting to provide a theological
synthesis that embraced not just logic but also ethics. Working from the
key insight that all wisdom, secular and sacred, is inspired by the Holy
Spirit, he created a synthesis accessible in its broad outlines not just to
his male students in Paris but to Heloise and her community at the abbey
dedicated to the Paraclete. Many of his ideas about redemption, sin, and
virtue had been provoked by discussion with Heloise. He rested his ar-
guments not on Boethius but on the ancient philosophers, above all on
Aristotle and on Scripture, in particular on Pauls Epistle to the Romans.
Hugh of St.-Victor based his arguments not on Aristotle or Boethius but
primarily on Scripture, arguing that through the sacraments of the
Church, a system of sacred signs, humanity can come to know God.
Above all, Hugh turned to the authority of The Celestial Hierarchy. Ab-
elard was sympathetic to Deniss theme that God was unknown, but never
drew on the writings attributed to the Areopagite. He preferred to draw
on Aristotles teaching about language to justify the claim that all state-
ments made about God can never dene ultimate reality. Hugh of St.-
Victor, by contrast, appreciated the hierarchical structure of the Areop-
agites thought, and developed the notion that Scripture, rightly
understood, can provide the means through which the mind can contem-
plate God.
Hugh rested his synthesis on the pillars of Scripture rather than of
pagan testimony. Suger drew on these great themes of Hugh of St.-Victor
in his own reections on the rebuilding of the Abbey of St.-Denis. By
experimenting with larger windows and smaller pillars, he hoped that the
faithful could be led in a similar way through reecting on physical beauty
to raise their minds to God. In 1127, Bernard of Clairvaux praised Sugers
plans to reform his monastic community on the basis of the Rule of Ben-
edict.12 (Whether he approved of Sugers taste in the internal decoration
of the abbey church is another matter.) Abelard had expressed his dis-
satisfaction with the practice of traditional monasticism in a more radical
way, by escaping from St.-Denis completely. By building with his own
hands an oratory, dedicated to the Paraclete, and then transferring it to
Heloise in 1129, he hoped to recreate a more authentic expression of the
ideals of the gospel. During the 1130s, at the same time Suger was re-
building the Abbey of St.-Denis, Bernard was watching over the construc-
tion and expansion of monastic buildings not just at Clairvaux but
throughout Latin Europe.
There were many clerics who wished to combine the best of the
traditions of both Abelard and Hugh of St.-Victor. Even those who were
wary of individual opinions of Abelard on matters of faith, sacraments,
and morality had to take into account his bringing to public attention
hitherto unnoticed patristic authorities, about the person of Christ, the
law of love as the foundation of all Christian ethics, and the relationship
between the three persons of the Trinity. For all his familiarity with pa-
tristic tradition, Hugh of St.-Victor preferred not to identify explicitly the
specic passages from the Fathers that shaped his thinking. Even his dis-
ciples, however, were aware that theological argument needed to be jus-
tied by explicit identication from patristic authority. One of the most
inuential of the theological syntheses that started to circulate in the late
1130s was the Summa sententiarum, the synthesis of sentences, by Master
Otto, a friend of Bernard of Clairvaux and bishop of Lucca from 1138
until his death in 1145/46.13 Otto of Lucca was heavily inuenced by
Hugh of St.-Victor, but preferred to imitate Abelard in acknowledging
more directly some of the same texts as Abelard quoted, if only to offer
an alternative interpretation. While some of Ottos ideas are drawn from
the collection that circulated as the Sententie Anselmi, his thinking about
the Trinity is closer to that of Walter of Mortagne, who taught at Laon
during the 1120s but certainly engaged in debate with Abelard during the
1130s. Otto quotes and debates many of the same patristic texts included
in the Sic et non and the Theologia Scholarium, but arrives at very different
conclusions.14 The theological issues in his Summa that become standard
in so much subsequent theological writing in the twelfth century are those
Abelard had been the rst to raise: about the nature of faith in God,
about the distinction between the three divine persons, about predicating
power, wisdom, and goodness of God, and about the nature of the divine
will.
Otto of Luccas resolution of all of these issues almost always stands in
opposition to the views of Abelard. Above all, Otto follows the tradition
established by Anselm of Laon of not recognizing insights gained by sec-
ular philosophy in shaping the way in which we can speak about God.
Otto alludes to the argument raised by Abelard that pagan philosophers
had a veiled faith in Christ, but he knows from authority that by reason
they could not have faith in the incarnation.15 While conceding that
there were pious gentiles, such as the widow Sareptena and Job, who
shared a common faith with Christians, he insists that their simple faith
no longer sufces in the time of grace and emphasizes that the faith of
Cornelius, the virtuous gentile, was not sufcient for salvation. On the
argument that God cannot act otherwise than in the way he does, Otto
is even more explicit in his hostility: But, as it seems to me, under these
words there hides poison.16 Like Anselm of Laon, Otto argues rmly that
original sin, not just its consequence, is transmitted to all descendants of
Adam, in whom all have sinned.17
Abelards arguments were also opposed by two other theologians who
started to gain prominence in the late 1130s. One was Robert Pullen (d.
1146), who probably studied under Anselm of Laon around 1113 and
then taught in England (perhaps in Exeter, and then Oxford) before
teaching in Paris during the years 11381144. Much admired by Bernard
of Clairvaux, he taught John of Salisbury for a short while before being
called to Rome in 1144 as a cardinal.18 His vast Sententiarum libri octo is
more speculative in character than the Summa sententiarum and demon-
strates a greater familiarity with Aristotelian categories, but it is equally
rm in demolishing Abelards arguments about omnipotence.19 Another
signicant gure in Paris was Peter Lombard, who had studied in Reims
until around 1136 before coming to study at the Abbey of St.-Victor,
armed with a letter of recommendation to the abbot from Bernard of
Clairvaux.20 By 1141, Peter Lombard was already positioning himself as a
theologian, loyal to the key insights of Hugh of St.-Victor but with a

much rmer grasp than Hugh of the arguments of both Abelard and Gil-
bert of Poitiers. While Lombard rarely agreed with Abelards more con-
troversial claims, he was indebted to Abelards patristic learning to such
an extent that John of Cornwall would later accuse Lombard of always
having a copy of the Theologia in his hand.21 Lombards own Four Books
of Sentences, much more tightly structured than those of Robert Pullen,
and completed by 1157, provides a more synthetic response to the ques-
tions raised but never fully answered by Abelard in his teaching.
A teacher more sympathetic to the spirit, if not to the letter, of Ab-
elards teaching was Robert of Melun. Unlike Peter Lombard, Robert
taught dialectic as well as theology. In his own major synthesis of theology,
also written in the 1150s, he claims the inspiration of two great teachers,
one of whom wrote about the sacraments of faith, the other about faith
and love.22 This comment neatly summarizes the contrasting emphases
of Hugh and Abelard. Robert argues that it is more important to have
heard these teachers deliver their judgments (sententie) in their own words
than to rely on the authority of the written word.23 Walter of Mortagne
also shared ideas with Abelard, even if he did not agree with everything
he said. Walter engaged in friendly disagreements with a number of his
contemporaries, including Alberic of Reims and Hugh of St.-Victor, over
their tendency to see Christ as not fearing death or not growing in wisdom
as a man.24 He also questioned Alberics argument that a promise to marry
someone at a future date was as binding as a marriage vow.25 Unlike Hugh
and Alberic, Walter lectured on dialectic as well as theology, acquiring a
limited reputation for his resolution of the issue of universals, and he
never demonized Abelard, even when voicing criticism of his ideas.26 Wal-
ter of Mortagne was himself accused of teaching that Christ was assumptus
homo, a man assumed by divinity. This forced him to compose a public
profession of his belief, addressed to all the faithful, in exactly the same
way Abelard would do in 1140.27 These suspicions of heresy did not pre-
vent Walter from becoming bishop of Laon from 1149 until his death in
1170. Local rivalries between cities and their educational institutions were
often as important as theological disagreements in provoking accusations
of heresy.
Not all teachers of theology were actively involved in public schools.
William of St.-Thierry, a monk at St. Nicasius in Reims from around
1095, and its abbot to 1135, was interested in exploring how amor was a
force of divine origin that was present in humanity through the work of
grace, albeit obscured by the weight of sin. He developed the idea that
through growing from amor to caritas we come to true wisdom and un-
derstanding of the nature of God. Amor, whether of family, of friends, or

of ones neighbor, had a divine origin and led to truly spiritual amor,
which he identied with understanding itself. William had been present
at Soissons in 1121 when Abelard attempted to defend his theology. In
his treatise De natura et dignitate amoris, William had expressed distaste
for what he perceived to be the intellectual arrogance of those who dared
to arrive at an understanding of God through divine reason alone. Wil-
liam, interested in dogmatic questions, such as about the Eucharist, was
inspired by his friendship with Bernard of Clairvaux to compose a series
of commentaries on the Song of Songs. He saw himself as a controver-
sialist, pointing out theological error when ideas of the Fathers had been
misunderstood. According to a letter of Walter of Mortagne, William had
reportedly claimed that children baptized by a heretic did not gain forgive-
ness of sins if they died before reaching maturity, an opinion that Walter
condemned.28 By heretic William could here be referring to the ruling
of the Second Lateran Council that declared null and void the ordination
of any schismatic or heretic, that is, of clergy loyal to Anacletus.
William had been very involved at the Council of Reims in October
1131 in trying to get all the abbots in the archdiocese of Reims to agree
to an annual general chapter, on the model of Cistercian practice.29 While
twenty-one abbots attended a meeting at St.-Medard, Soissons, the fol-
lowing year and agreed on many reforms of monastic observance, there
was hostility to the move from within individual Benedictine houses, even
from within his own abbey. These reforms provoked considerable antag-
onism from Cardinal Matthew of Albano, former prior of Cluny, and
strained relations between Peter the Venerable, as abbot of Cluny, and
Bernard of Clairvaux. In 1135, William left the Abbey of St.-Thierry,
Reims, to become the Cistercian abbot of Signy, some fty kilometers
north of the city. Here he composed a lengthy commentary on the Epistle
to the Romans in 1137, a series of meditative prayers, and a new com-
mentary on the Song of Songs, much inuenced by his contact with
Bernard of Clairvaux, whom he had rst befriended between 1115 and
1121, when William of Champeaux rst came into contact with the
young abbot of Clairvaux. As a native of Lie`ge, William of St.-Thierry
may also have known Conon of Palestrina, founder of Arrouaise and the
papal legate who presided over the burning of Abelards treatise at Sois-
sons.
While William was a strong analytic thinker, he lacked the literary
sparkle of Bernard of Clairvaux. The two friends also differed in the extent
to which they privileged personal experience. Whereas William con-
trasted worldly love, as expounded in the Ars amatoria, and spiritual love,
as discussed by Augustine, Bernard emphasized the continuity of stages in

the path of love, beginning with carnal love but evolving to a spiritual
love that gradually frees itself from concern with self, to be concerned
with God alone. Unlike William, whose major concern was with Gods
nature and how we know God through the work of grace, Bernard em-
phasized how we love our neighbor, our close friend, and ultimately God
himself for no other reward than God himself. By developing the richly
erotic imagery of the Song of Songs, Bernard argued that it is only through
desire that we come to seek the beloved, none other than the Word of
God. In his Life of Bernard (the so-called Vita prima), William tells stories
about Bernard rejecting the ame of carnal desire, as if needing to defend
Bernard from such accusations. Bernards harshest critic, Berengar of Poi-
tiers, claimed in his Apologia that Bernard once composed love songs in
his youth and that some of Bernards homilies on the Song of Songs (such
as a lament for his brother Godfrey, who died at Clairvaux in 1138) broke
with standard literary convention.30 These polemically driven accusations
capture contemporary awareness that Bernard was a genius like no other,
who had made the art of celebrating love peculiarly his own.
Sometime in Lent 1140, William sent Bernard of Clairvaux and Geof-
frey of Chartres, the papal legate, a letter with an accompanying Dispu-
tatio, warning of thirteen dangerous heresies contained in two texts that
he had come across in Abelards Theologia Scholarium and a book of his
sententie, commonly known as the Liber sententiarum, which purported to
give Abelards teaching not just on the divine nature but on the incar-
nation, the sacraments, and charity.31 We can only presume that a monk
had come to Signy bringing these texts with him. The great majority of
scholastic manuscripts from the period survive in copies contributed to
monastic libraries in this way. William, ever attentive to the great themes
of Trinitarian theology, was particularly alarmed at statements that im-
plied Abelard dened God the Son only as a certain power and the
Holy Spirit as no power at all and at Abelards apparent rejection of
the argument that the Son of God became man to free humanity from
the devils yoke. William had been present at the Council of Soissons in
1121, where a very similar charge, that Abelard attributed omnipotence
to the Father alone (not to the Son and Holy Spirit), had been invoked
to justify an accusation of heresy and the burning of his rst treatise on
the Trinity. William was troubled by the continued inuence that Abe-
lards writing was having, even beyond the Alps, to the papal court itself.
Williams fears were exacerbated by an increasingly polarized political
situation in the years 11391140. At the Second Lateran Council, held
in April 1139, Pope Innocent II had expelled from Italy Arnold of Brescia,
an Augustinian canon and celebrated preacher who had achieved noto-

riety in his native Brescia for resisting the claims to temporal authority
by the Church. Arnold traveled to Paris, where, sometime in 1139, he
attached himself to Abelard on the Montagne Ste.-Genevie`ve.32 Arnolds
presence in Paris created a dangerous situation for Abelard, who was per-
ceived by his critics as giving support to a dangerous rebrand. Arnold
was also reportedly in contact with Cardinal Hyacinth, a Roman cleric
who had supported Anacletus II but who came to France at this time and
allegedly campaigned against Bernard of Clairvaux. William was partic-
ularly worried by the support that Abelard enjoyed among certain ele-
ments of the papal court. One cardinal who certainly owned copies of
Abelards Theologia Christiana and Sic et non (in the version as it stood in
the early 1130s, when Abelard was drafting the Theologia Scholarium)
was Cardinal Guy di Castello, a magister who had himself amassed a sig-
nicant library of scholastic writings. On Innocent IIs death on Septem-
ber 24, 1143, Guy was elected by the cardinals as pope and took the name
Celestine II (September 26, 1143March 8, 1144). The fact that during
his short papacyaccording to one rumor, cut short by his being poi-
sonedArnold of Brescia returned to Italy suggests that Celestine was
willing to negotiate with the city of Rome. This policy was not continued
by his successor, Lucius II, who was fatally wounded leading an attack on
the Capitol. The chronicle of Morigny reports that Cardinal Guy stood
out for his nobility, capacity for hard work, and learning.33 William was
disturbed by the thought that theological doctrines which seemed to chal-
lenge divine omnipotence and the power of Christ to free humanity from
the yoke of the devil could provoke schism in the Church if they were
allowed to develop unchecked. Abelard became a symbol of danger.
Not only was civil war about to break out within Rome, as supporters
of Jordan, brother of Anacletus II, resisted the claims to papal authority
being mounted by Innocent II, but even within a number of cities within
France there was much tension between municipal and ecclesiastical au-
thorities. Nowhere was this more acute than within the city of Reims
following the death of Archbishop Rainald on January 13/14, 1139.34 A
commune had been established that challenged traditional privileges of
the cathedral chapter. Earlier in the twelfth century, communes had been
established at a number of cities in France, as at Laon, with the cooper-
ation of a bishop, who agreed that a municipality could look after its own
affairs in return for a nancial arrangement with the episcopal authorities.
Sixteen years after the catastrophic events of 1112, when the bishop of
Laon had been murdered and the commune crushed, the commune was
reestablished, with a new charter carefully designed to regulate situations
of internal conict. By contrast, the commune established at Reims during

the years 11391140, a period when there was no archbishop (two years
according to one chronicler), was perceived by Suger of St.-Denis, who
supported the crushing of the Laon commune in 1112, as a dangerous
threat. Bernard of Clairvaux was likewise troubled during the years 1139/
40 by the failure of the church of Reims to appoint a new archbishop,
although he refused an invitation to take the position himself. The com-
mune was crushed in 1140 through the efforts of Ralph of Vermandois
and the support of Suger of St.-Denis. Pope Innocent II issued directives
excommunicating all those attempting to restore the commune in Reims.
The week after Easter (more likely 1140 than 1141), a cleric from Char-
tres, Samson, was consecrated archbishop of Reims by Sugers close friend
Joscelin of Soissons, unusually, in Soissons. It seems that Samson was not
able to take possession of Reims until much later that year. On November
1, 1140, Bishop Milo of Therouanne had to purify a church in Reims
where a priest supported by the commune had celebrated the Eucharist.
Many abbots and churchmen were troubled by the very serious threats
being presented to ecclesiastical authority by those who claimed that the
Church was too involved in protecting its temporal authority.
In a tense situation, abbots such as William of St.-Thierry and Bernard
of Clairvaux were troubled by any challenge to religious authority. After
Bernard received Williams letter and Disputatio on the errors of Abelard,
along with copies of the controversial Theologia Scholarium and book of
sentences, he suggested that they meet after Easter of that year to plan
their moves. Williams treatise provided a sophisticated and lengthy anal-
ysis of passages of Abelards writing. The Theologia was not an easy text
to read. Teachers such as Walter of Mortagne and Hugh of St.-Victor had
questioned individual propositions put forward by Abelard, but without
ever assaulting Abelard as a person. When criticisms were raised within
rational discussion, Abelard was prepared to modify his wording. Bernard,
not comfortable with the technique of the Disputatio, drastically simplied
the academic tone of Williams treatise to create a more vigorously argued
public letter (Letter 190), addressed to Pope Innocent II, in which he
presents Abelards ideas as a dangerous threat to the unity of the Church.35
It echoes the letter De incarnatione Verbi that St. Anselm had addressed
to Pope Urban II on the errors of Roscelin. Bernard concentrates on only
two main issues from the thirteen presented to him by William: the state-
ments about the Son being a certain power and the Holy Spirit no
power at all, and Abelards apparent assertion that although all the Fa-
thers of the Church had declared that the devil enjoyed a legitimate right
and power over fallen humanity, he considered that this supposed devils
right never existed at all. In an expanded version of this letter, Bernard

adds the detail, quite correctly, that Abelard had made exactly the same
claim in his commentary on Romans. Bernard also makes passing allusion
to Abelards apparent denial that there was a spirit of fear of the Lord in
Christ or that there was a chaste fear of the Lord in the world to come,
and to teaching that the accidents of bread and wine remained in the
Eucharist, that contact with herbs and stones could provoke demonic
incitements to vice, that the Holy Spirit is the soul of the world, and
that Abelard tries to make Plato into a Christian. These claims distort
Abelards teaching so much that they are not easy to understand. Unlike
William, Bernard was not interested in engaging in a scholastic disputa-
tion. His intent was to create a persuasive document that would force the
pope to act against the heresies of Abelard.
There is little evidence that Bernard engaged in any detailed reading
of Abelards Theologia or the book of sentences. Most of his quotations
from these texts come from his reading of Williams treatise. The list of
nineteen capitula or headings appended to Bernards Letter 190 were com-
piled from conating Williams list of thirteen heresies with another list
of fourteen heresies, each supported by quotations from the Theologia or
book of sentences.36 It seems that Bernard gave the controversial texts in
question to an assistant who could engage in the more technical work of
dening the particular heresies present in Abelards writing. Certain of
the headings and quotations in this list of fourteen are so similar to ac-
cusations included in a Disputatio written by Thomas of Morigny that it
seems very likely that Thomas was the assistant to whom Bernard gave
the offending treatises, so as to verify the claims of William of St.-Thierry.
In general, the nal list appended to letter 190 follows the list of fourteen
with one exception: Williams opening claim that Abelard asserts that the
Son is a certain power and the Holy Spirit no power at all has replaced
the opening heresy identied in the list of fourteen, which is simply an
assertion of hostility to Abelards comparison of the Trinity to a bronze
seal and to species and genus. Perhaps following the meeting between
Bernard and William, Thomas of Morigny agreed to a fourteenth heading,
that omnipotence belongs properly or specially to the Father, which did
enter the nal list of nineteen. Bernard indicated with a cross the four
heretical propositions he thought he had covered in his letter 190 to Pope
Innocent: about the Son and Holy Spirit as a certain power and no
power at all, about the Holy Spirit as not from the substance of the
Father and the Son, about Christ not assuming esh to free us from the
yoke of the devil, and about omnipotence, not wisdom or benignity.37
The list concludes with the claim that all the propositions mentioned had
been found partly in the Theologia, partly in the book of sentences of

Master Peter, partly in the book entitled Scito teipsum. Bernards letter
190, with its appended list, started to circulate very quickly in monastic
libraries, so many of which were being established across Europe either in
new Cistercian foundations or in reformed Benedictine communities. The
public letter is a masterpiece of rhetorical writing, presenting Abelard as
an arrogant intellectual who had never grown past his early obsession
with dialectic but who foolishly questions the omnipotence of all three
persons of the Trinity.
The very same day (November 1, 1140) that Milo, bishop of Ther-
ouanne, was purifying an abbey in Reims that had been polluted by the
presence of a priest supported by the commune of the city, Bernard of
Clairvaux was preaching to the students of Paris that they should ee
Babylon and turn to the new Jerusalem, the enclave of the monastic
life. According to a letter written by the archbishop of Sens, Bernard met
with Abelard, initially in private and then in the presence of witnesses,
to ask that he revise the offending passages in a friendly and familiar
way. Abelards anger was provoked when Bernard urged the Parisian stu-
dents to repudiate and reject books full of poison and to beware of any
teaching that might be harmful to catholic faith. According to the arch-
bishop, the argument between Abelard and Bernard then became a cause
cele`bre, creating discussion about the most serious matters of faith
throughout the towns of France not only among students, but even among
the uneducated.38 While Bernard did not refer to Abelard by name in the
nished form of his De conversione, he did warn his students against the
dangers of becoming enmeshed in academic study for its own sake, with-
out appreciation of the true end of the religious life. Within a complex
educational environment, in which Abelard was only one of a range of
teachers active in Paris, Bernard used the gure of Abelard to symbolize
the vice of intellectual arrogance, in the same way St. Anselm had done
with Roscelin. Geoffrey of Auxerre was one of those students who re-
sponded to Bernards preaching. He explains that he once listened to
Abelard lecture on redemption, but decided that while Abelard spoke so
richly about the divine love manifested by Christs example, he did not
explain sufciently how Christ had come to free humanity from the chains
of sin.39 Geoffrey joined Bernard at Clairvaux, becoming in time his sec-
retary, and was closely involved in producing copies of Bernards corre-
spondence for wider circulation. By compiling a register of Bernards let-
ters, including those that concerned his writing against Abelard, Geoffrey
would be immensely inuential in shaping the way Bernard was perceived
by subsequent generations.
Abelard then contacted Henry, archbishop of Sens, and a kinsman of

Stephen of Garlande (provost of the Cathedral of Sens, among many
other positions), to demand that he be able to defend himself against
Bernards accusations at a forthcoming council that the archbishop in-
tended to hold at Sens on the Octave of Pentecost (May 25, 1141).
Bernard was initially unwilling to respond to the archbishops invitation,
but he was eventually persuaded to do so by certain friends.40 Once he
had agreed to attend, Bernard wrote to the bishops of France, explaining
that he had been provoked into this confrontation and that it was now
up to them to choose to defend the Christian faith.41 Abelard similarly
asked his supporters to attend the disputation, condent that he would
win the argument.
Some time after Bernards letter 190 entered circulation, Abelard re-
sponded with a Confessio dei addressed to the whole Church, not unlike
a manifesto addressed to the Church by Walter of Mortagne. (Whether
Walters confession of faith was written before or after 1140 is not cer-
tain.)42 Here Abelard challenges the accuracy of the statements in the list
of nineteen headings appended to Bernards letter 190. In each case, he
claims, Bernard had completely misunderstood what he was saying. He
had been quoted out of context, with no awareness of the larger argument
that he was putting forward. Seizing on Bernards reference to the book
of sentences of Master Peter, he denies that this was ever one of his
writings, like the Theologia or Scito teipsum. In fact, the Liber sententiarum
was probably compiled from Abelards teaching by a disciple, who used
some passages about the incarnation identical to what Abelard had writ-
ten in his commentary on Romans.43 Abelard also composed an Apologia,
in which he explains in much more detail the great inaccuracy of Ber-
nards claims in letter 190. Unfortunately, only the opening section of
this Apologia has survived, as well as certain extracts quoted by Thomas
of Morigny, who wrote a learned Disputation of the Catholic Fathers to
defend Bernard of Clairvaux from the accusations that Abelard was mak-
ing.44 Exactly when Abelard wrote this Apologia or Thomas his response
to it is uncertain. Although Otto of Freising claimed that Abelard wrote
the Apologia after the Council of Sens, this seems unlikely given that
neither he nor Thomas of Morigny mention the council, and that Abelard
and Bernard did come to a settlement of sorts by August/September of
1141.45 Thomas of Morigny makes no allusion at all to the events of the
council. In the Apologia, Abelard accuses the abbot of Clairvaux of ma-
licious intent in twisting the words of the Theologia far beyond their actual
meaning. His recurring theme is that one must always respect the force
of words. Bernard did not understand how words could change their
meaning from one context to the next. Thomas of Morigny takes account
of Abelards insistence that he should only be judged by his authentic
writings, but still insists that Abelard is opposing the teaching of the
Fathers of the Church. Abelard is emphatic that he is questioning limi-
tations in the way the Fathers of the Church had attempted to dene
Christian doctrine, not the wisdom of Christ himself.
Henrys purpose in calling a Council of Sens originally had nothing to
do with the argument between Abelard and Bernard. The archbishop was
presenting a solemn exposition of the relics of Stephen, the patron saint
of the Church of Sens. He had invited Samson, newly installed as arch-
bishop of Reims, as well as other bishops of the archdioceses of Reims
and Sens, together with King Louis VII and other powerful gures of the
realm. Henry, who had been consecrated archbishop of Sens in 1124, had
engaged in a major rebuilding of the Cathedral of Sens, unusual for its
great widthmaking it ideal for such a large assembly. While the new
cathedral was probably far from complete, the public exposition of its
relics provided an occasion to assert the authority of Sens over Reims and
to present his cathedral as a symbol of the unity of the Church and the
nation, three years before Suger completed the rebuilding of St.-Denis. In
1127/28, Bernard of Clairvaux had addressed a lengthy treatise to Henry
on the duties of bishops, attering him for his loyalty to the reform move-
ment. By the late 1130s, however, Bernard had had some serious dis-
agreements with the archbishop of Sens over unspecied issues. Abelard
hoped he would gain a sympathetic hearing.46
As it happened, Abelard never obtained the opportunity to defend
himself against the accusations being put against him. According to a
number of witnesses, Bernard of Clairvaux addressed the assembled bish-
ops on the eve of the council and persuaded them to condemn the con-
troversial propositions before Abelard had put his case. While the account
of Berengar of Poitiers is harshly satirical of what he claims was a travesty
of justice conducted in an unofcial, drunken assembly, the archbishop
of Sens also conrms that Bernard did indeed preach to the bishops before
the council had ofcially opened.47 John of Salisbury recalls that the car-
dinals of the curia (none of whom were present at Sens) were particularly
angry with Bernard for employing this tactic of securing an episcopal
decision before Abelard had put his case, just as they opposed his at-
tempting the same tactic against Gilbert of Poitiers at the Council of
Reims in 1148.48 On the latter occasion Bernard was unable to persuade
the majority of cardinals of his case against Gilbert. When the contro-
versial capitula were read out the following day at the council, Abelards
response, described with dramatic detail by Geoffrey of Auxerre, was to

refrain from making any response. He took the step, entirely within his
right, of appealing to a higher court, namely, that of Rome. This meant
that the assembled bishops were unable to deliver the ofcial condem-
nation to which they had been urged by Bernard.
Various other issues were discussed at the Council of Sens, including
a demand from the canons of Tournai that their diocese be recognized as
independent from the diocese of Noyon, but none of these attracted the
public attention of the confrontation between Bernard and Abelard, two
of the most charismatic and controversial gures of the age.49 The con-
troversy polarized opinion, tending to force many clerics and ecclesiastics
to identify with one side or another. Some of the most signicant debates
that went on at the council are hidden from the public record, in partic-
ular those between the aged archbishop of Sens and the newly appointed
archbishop of Reims, who was closely supported by Bernard. When Ab-
elard announced that he would appeal to Rome, Bernard and his secretary
set about writing letters both to Pope Innocent II and to various cardinals
in Rome, explaining what had happened at the council and urging them
to condemn Abelard before he had a chance to put his case. The letter
sent to the pope in the name of Samson, archbishop of Reims, and his
fellow bishops is written in a style so similar to that of Bernards other
letters that it seems to have been written by the abbot of Clairvaux him-
self. Bernard evoked the fear of schism returning to the Church if Abe-
lards ideas were allowed to gain inuence. Above all, he warned about
the danger presented by Arnold of Brescia as Abelards shield-bearer.
Bernard was seriously worried that, given popular support for Arnold as
a known critic of Pope Innocent II, the theology of Abelard could give
moral justication for political revolt and schism within the Church.50
The letter addressed to Master Guy of Castello is particularly signi-
cant in this respect, given his seniority within the papal curia. Bernard
laments that Abelard, an enemy of Christ, is a monk only in outward
appearance, while within he is a dangerous heretic and is proclaiming
that he has inuence in the papal court.51 Other cardinals to whom Ber-
nard wrote were more openly sympathetic to the abbot of Clairvaux, such
as Stephen, cardinal bishop of Palestrina, one of the monks of Clairvaux
whom Bernard had sent to Italy in 1140 (along with Bernardo Pignatelli,
subsequently elected pope as Eugenius III in 1145) to strengthen a new
Cistercian abbey not far from Rome, dedicated to Saints Vincent and
Anastasius. Stephen had been consecrated cardinal bishop by Pope In-
nocent II on April 8, 1141.52 With such friends recently installed in po-
sitions of inuence, Bernard hoped that he could counter the inuence

of cardinals such as Guy of Castello, known to be sympathetic toward
Abelard.
The letter sent to Innocent II by the archbishop and bishops of Sens,
not as widely circulated as the letter from the archbishop of Reims, gives
a much more nuanced account, explaining the maneuvering of the two
parties, in particular the meeting of Bernard of Clairvaux with the bishops
on the eve of the council. This letter may have prompted Bernard to
provide Innocent II with a longer account of the proceedings of the coun-
cil in letter 189, in which he describes the threat to Christendom pre-
sented by Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, and how he only reluctantly
attended the council after Abelard had claimed that he would respond
there to the charges being made against him. He makes no reference,
however, to the meeting prior to the council, only that Abelard had
decidedfor no apparent reasonto suspend his demand that he defend
himself at Sens, and instead to transfer his appeal to Rome.
On July 16, less than two months after Abelard had announced that
he would appeal to Rome, Innocent II issued a letter, widely circulated
as part of the register of letters of Bernard of Clairvaux, that is of great
importance in providing the rst clear justication of papal authority to
condemn heresy. Even the cases of Berengar of Tours and of Roscelin of
Compie`gne in the eleventh century had provided no precedent for such
a papal condemnation. This letter, written either by Innocent or a papal
secretary, claimed justication for such an action in precedents set by the
Councils of Constantinople and Ephesus. It also quotes from a letter at-
tributed to the Emperor Martianus, written to Pope John (in fact sent
in 452 to the citizens of Constantinople) forbidding anyone from speaking
against the decisions of a council.53 Disregarding the fact that none of the
three precedents quoted here actually referred to the papal condemnation
of a heretic, Innocent II then declares that he has consulted with his
bishops and cardinals and has decided to condemn Abelard and his per-
nicious teachings, imposing on their author a sentence of perpetual si-
lence, and excommunicating all those who follow him. The pope also
composed a separate note, not transmitted alongside the letters of Bernard
of Clairvaux, ordering that Abelard and Arnold be held in captivity and
their books burned.54
This particular edict was never implemented, because Abelard was
urged to desist from his endeavor to appeal to Rome by the abbot of
Cluny, Peter the Venerable. The story of how Abelard was visiting Cluny,
en route for Rome, and was then persuaded to come to an agreement
with Bernard, is told by Peter in a letter to Pope Innocent II. This rec-
onciliation was apparently organized jointly by the abbots of Cteaux and

Cluny. According to Peter, Bernard persuaded Abelard to modify offend-
ing passages in the Theologia Scholarium, while in return Bernard agreed
to refrain from any further preaching against Abelard, who agreed to re-
main as a monk at Cluny and thus not to take his appeal to Rome.55
Abelard, now over sixty years old, was not in good health, and thus was
in no condition to carry out his plan. The edict that Abelard and Arnold
should be held in connement was thus never put into effect. Peter sub-
sequently obtained the lifting of the sentence of excommunication that
had been imposed on Abelard in response to the letters of Bernard and
the archbishops of Reims and Sens.
The papal edict revoking the sentence has not survived, and the letter
in which Peter the Venerable supplies this information was never widely
diffused. As a result, the most widely known image of Abelard in the
twelfth century was that provided by the collection of letters of Bernard
of Clairvaux, put together by Geoffrey of Auxerre. Even before the letters
pertaining to Abelard were assembled in the most complete registers of
Bernards correspondence, the letter of Pope Innocent II was given wide
prominence, so giving the impression that Bernard had effectively ob-
tained the denitive condemnation of a dangerous heretic. In his contri-
bution to the Vita prima of Bernard, Geoffrey of Auxerre provided a sim-
ilar impression of Bernard as a man of God who acted decisively against
Abelard and obtained ofcial condemnation of his teaching by the assem-
bled bishops at the Council of Sens, and then by the pope.
While Bernard presents Abelard as intellectually proud and unrepen-
tant in his error, Peter the Venerable conveys the impression that his
protege had repented of his sins and was now committed to ecclesiastical
orthodoxy. Neither perspective offers a particularly nuanced reading of
Abelards intellectual development. In the Confessio dei Universis, Ab-
elard insists that many of the claims being made about his teaching were
either untrue or based on a distortion of what he had written in the
Theologia Scholarium. He seizes on Bernards attribution to him of the
Liber sententiarum to deny that the work was hiseven though many of
its teachings were based directly on his writings. By selective quotation,
his critics had created a very distorted summary of his teaching that sin-
gled out passages in which Abelard seems to question the full identity of
God the Son and God the Holy Spirit with God the Father, and to deny
what they considered a core Christian doctrine, namely, that God became
man in Christ to redeem humanity from the yoke of the devil. In a letter
that Abelard wrote at this time to Heloise, he insists even more clearly
on his Christian orthodoxy: that he considered the Son and Holy Spirit
to be equal to God the Father and that he rejected the claims of both
Arius and Sabellius, complaining that logica has made me hateful to the
world.56 Those who argue that he has misunderstood Paul fail to under-
stand the central direction of his Christian commitment.
Abelard provides much more detail about his theological position in
changes and additions that he made to his Theologia Scholarium that
were incorporated by a fourteenth-century scribe into one particularly
important manuscript of this work (which also contains his Collationes,
the commentary on Romans, and his Ethica, or Scito teipsum). It is sig-
nicant that in this copy of the Theologia, Abelard has either modied or
extended all those passages that alarmed William of St.-Thierry and Ber-
nard of Clairvaux, in order to clarify his argument. Abelard takes pains
to reinforce his point that he is not saying that God the Son is less
omnipotent than God the Father, or that the Son is a species or specic
form of the Father. Rather, he is saying that the Son, divine wisdom, is
a specic kind of power, namely, the power of discernment. There are
many expressions advancing the same fundamental meaning that are dif-
ferent in their construction. It is thus legitimate to nd different ways of
expressing the same underlying truth.57
Abelards apparent claim that the Holy Spirit, divine benignity, is no
power at all provokes him to rewrite a particularly controversial passage
to explain that benignity is not potency or a form of wisdom but rather
is an aspect of caritas. Far from minimizing the power of the Holy Spirit,
he understands the teaching that the Spirit proceeds from the Father
and the Son as describing a relationship not of power but of love. This
was perhaps the most wounding accusation of all because it failed to
understand the central thrust of his theology: that the Holy Spirit was
not simply the mutual love of the Father and the Son, but the divine
goodness extending from God that embraced not just Christ but all of
creation. His argument hinges on what might seem a ne point: that the
Son is begotten of the Father (ex patre) while the Holy Spirit proceeds
from (de) the Father and the Son. While it is linguistically necessary to
preserve the distinction between ex and de, this does not mean that the
Holy Spirit is somehow less important than the Father or the Son. Ab-
elard does not soften the bitterness of his complaint that some people
not understanding the force of words do not understand his distinction
that divine benignity is not the same as wisdom or potency, and conclude
that he is committing some blasphemy. They do not appreciate that when
we say that God is power, wisdom, and goodness, we have to speak meta-
phorically.58 No term or expression signies a specic res, but rather sig-
nies some attribute of what is being predicated, in this case God. Even
Augustines denition of caritas as a movement of the soul to enjoy God

for his own sake cannot be strictly invoked when we describe God as
caritas, as the Augustinian denition only refers to human love. He now
refers to the Holy Spirit not just as benignity or goodness but as the amor
Dei, the love of God. Loving is clearly different from being wise or being
powerful, even though it does not necessarily signify a separate entity from
that which is wise or powerful. By replacing benignitas with amor in his
discussion of the third person of the Trinity, Abelard creates a new in-
tensity to his discussion.59 The term benignity, which he had originally
invoked in the Theologia Summi boni, conveys tender concern. While
he had related this to caritas, he now relates this to amor to communicate
his understanding of the Holy Spirit as perfect love.
Exactly when Abelard reworded these controversial passages in his
treatise is not certain. One possibility is that he made these changes after
his meeting with Bernard of Clairvaux in November 1140. Alternatively,
he made them immediately following the reconciliation reached with Ber-
nard after July 1141, or even directly after the Council of Sens. They
betray little softening of Abelards attitude toward his critics. In the last
surviving revision of his Theologia, Abelard gives us no reason to think
that the campaign conducted against him forced him in any way to with-
draw any of his major arguments. Right to the end of his life, controversy
forced Abelard to rene what he had to say and perhaps to modify images
that he employed, but never to withdraw the fundamental issues about
language and Gods divine nature that he was putting forward.
To the end, Abelard complained that he had been seriously misunder-
stood. This was why he wanted to appeal to Rome, optimistically thinking
that there he could nd an audience that would appreciate what he had
to say. The bishops assembled at the Council of Sens had agreed with
Bernard that they should condemn Abelard and his teachings, but they
were thwarted in delivering an ofcial verdict by his declaration that he
would appeal to Rome. Most monastic chroniclers, dependent on the
information supplied by Geoffrey of Auxerre and the collection of Ber-
nards letters, were unaware that the papal condemnation of July 16 was
subsequently lifted through the intervention of Peter the Venerable.
While the agreement obtained by the abbots of Cteaux and Cluny got
Bernard to agree that he would not to attack Abelard any further, Geof-
frey of Auxerre had no hesitation in prolonging the debate, not least
because the dossier of letters helped promote Bernards reputation as a
defender of orthodoxy. There were some clerics, such as Berengar of Poi-
tiers, who spoke up vociferously in defense of Abelard and expressed out-
right hostility to Bernard of Clairvaux. Another admirer penned a lament
for Abelard, modeled on the text and melody of one of Abelards own
laments, grieving that he had been unjustly condemned by a pseudo-
monastic crowd.60 In the Metamorphosis Goliae, an anonymous Latin poet
lamented that cowled monks were threatening the independence not just
of Abelard but of a whole host of distinguished masters teaching in Paris.
The confrontation between Bernard and Abelard at Sens made a great
impact on their contemporaries, but more through hearsay and reliance
on a limited range of documents. Even such a well-informed observer as
Otto of Freising had no access to the most detailed account of the council,
written by the archbishop of Sens, and knew only that the pope had
imposed a sentence of perpetual silence on Abelard.61 Ottos broader in-
tention was to emphasize the great difference between what he considered
to be Bernards justied intervention against Abelard and his misguided
attempt to condemn Gilbert of Poitiers at the Council of Reims in 1148.
Abelards error was not that he used arguments from logic in theology but
that he did so incautiously, unlike Gilbert of Poitiers. Ottos claim that
Abelard was condemned at Soissons for minimizing the difference be-
tween the three persons of the Trinity, which he claimed are distinct
things with discrete properties, reproduced the argument that Roscelin
made against Abelard.
Ottos own denition of the three divine persons as separate things
coincides with that of Roscelin. In presenting the argument of Gilbert of
Poitiers, he explains that Gilbert held the teaching in logic that when
someone says that Socrates is, he does not say anything, in other words,
does not assume that Socratem esse refers to any particular thing. Trans-
ferring this to theology, Gilbert argued that each of the divine persons is
a thing one in itself (omnis persona res est per se una), without implying
that these are separate entities.62 Gilbert did not doubt the common di-
vinity by which each of the three persons exists, but rather was applying
to theology the linguistic principle that what a substance is (id quod est)
is different from the quality by which (id quo) it is informed. In his com-
mentaries on Boethius, Gilbert avoided using the term res to qualify per-
sona, but repeats the notion that a person is one in itself. Gilberts
thought developed a notion implicit in the renement of Priscians de-
nition of a noun offered by the Glosule on the Grammatical Institutes: that
rather than signifying a substance with quality, a noun names a substance
but signies a quality. A divine person, something that is per se una, is
informed by a quality such as fatherhood (paternitas), but cannot be iden-
tied with its quality. Bernard did not understand the linguistic reason
for distinguishing between deus and deitas. Abelard was also critical of
those teachers (perhaps including Gilbert of Poitiers) who insisted on
distinguishing a noun from an abstract quality, but for very different rea-
sons from Bernard. His argument was that a divine attribute like paternitas
could never be a separate thing (res) from that which it qualied, namely,
pater. While Abelard adhered closely to Aristotle in criticizing any at-
tempt to identify forms as separate from that which they inform, Gilbert
rested his argument on the authority of Boethius, integrating both Aris-
totle and Plato into his philosophical synthesis. The genius of Gilberts
philosophical system was to combine respect for the identity of individuals
with reverence for their common identity as based on abstract form. Otto
of Freising admired Gilberts metaphysical system, with its respect for both
individuality and universality, but could not understand Abelards argu-
ment that all the divine attributes predicated of God identify some aspect
of his nature. Gilbert of Poitiers had himself been critical of the arguments
about the Trinity raised by Abelard because they did not sufciently dis-
tinguish between a substance and its quality. Not understanding the cen-
tral thread that drives Abelards analysis of language as the product of
human invention, Otto of Freising effectively accused Abelard of disre-
specting the authority of Boethius. In his mind, Abelards theology threat-
ened to subvert the natural order of Christian belief.
Whether Abelard really was as subversive a thinker as his critics made
him out to be is another matter. In his own mind, the criticisms that he
made of opinions delivered by Boethius, Augustine, and other more recent
teachers originated not out of a desire to present himself as their rival,
but out of a conviction that they did not understand fully the way in
which language is a product of human invention. In particular, Abelard
distanced himself from a widespread assumption that humanity had been
corrupted by original sin and that only by grace, as mediated through the
Church and its sacraments, could it nd salvation. Inspired by a contem-
porary revival of interest in classical authors, he sought to develop a the-
ology that was centered on respect for the Holy Spirit as the divine good-
ness, perceived by philosophers and prophets alike. Rejecting the image
of omnipotence as the dening character of God, Abelard emphasized
that God is rst of all the supreme good, through which all things exist.
The full contours of Abelards theology only emerged in the 1130s, after
he had resumed contact with Heloise and had invited her to take over
the oratory he had built with his own hands and had dedicated to the
Paraclete. As a monk at St.-Denis, he steered away from the ethical ques-
tions that had always preoccupied Heloise. In his early writing on the-
ology, he was concerned much more to apply the insights from his study
of language to the issue of how we talk about God than to the question
of what constitutes right and wrong behavior.
When he wrote the Historia calamitatum around 1132, Abelard was

anxious to demonstrate that he was no longer the headstrong youth of
the past, celebrated more for his love songs about Heloise than for his
insight into theology. Rather than simply condemning his past, he argued
that no theology true to its name can rely simply on blind acceptance of
authority. It has to take into account the questions that people ask about
the meaning of Christian doctrine. While in his theological writing Ab-
elard was perturbed by the extent to which some contemporary preachers
seemed to challenge the legitimacy of the sacraments and of the Church,
he was convinced that they had to be answered by reason rather than by
force. During the 1130s, he developed the idea that God took human
form in Jesus not to free humanity from any yoke to the devil but to
invite humanity to the love of God through the sublime example offered
by Jesus in his seless living and dying for others. He also developed his
thinking about love as the basis of all true morality. He dened sin not
as wrong will, as he assumed previously, but as deliberate consent to a
wrong will, in contempt of God. He became increasingly aware of the
hypocrisy involved in so much Christian teaching, in which emphasis was
placed on correct observance of the sacraments and of religious duties
rather than on the ethical demands of the Christian message.
After Arnold of Brescia went to Paris during the years 1139/40, it was
perhaps inevitable that Abelard should be seen by his critics as lending
support to forces subversive of the social order. Without any surviving
writings from Arnold, it is impossible to assess whether this Italian
preacher really was as dangerous or as subversive a gure as Bernard of
Clairvaux made him out to be. There is no doubt, however, that the
political situation in Europe had become so polarized that it was increas-
ingly difcult for anyone to criticize papal authority without being accused
of being a heretic. Abelard was not skilled in handling political debate,
and was excessively condent that he could explain his arguments to his
audience. Even though the sentence of excommunication imposed on him
by Innocent II was nally lifted, he never succeeded in communicating
to a wide audience the full vision of his ideas.
Abelard died on April 21, 1142, at the priory of Chalon-sur-Saone,
where he had been moved for the sake of his health.63 Not long after
Abelard died, Peter the Venerable gave permission for his body to be
buried at the Abbey of the Paraclete. The epitaph placed on his tomb
neatly encapsulates the breadth of philosophical vision for which he was
so admired by Heloise:64
Est satis in titulo: Petrus hic iacet Abaelardus

Cui soli patuit scibile quicquid erat.
[It is sufcient as an epitaph: Here lies Peter Abelard,

To whom alone was evident whatever was knowable.]
Little is known for certain about Heloises personal evolution over the
next two decades. She was to live on for another twenty-two years, as
abbess of the Paraclete. Under her stewardship the community prospered,
establishing a number of daughter houses in the region. The signicance
of her achievement as both an administrator and a writer in these years
after Abelards death is only now beginning to emerge.65 Although she
did not have the resources of the Cathedral of Sens or the Abbey of St.-
Denis, she strove to make her community live out its commitment to the
Paraclete. Unlike Abelard, Heloise knew how to negotiate with a range
of authorities in the region, both ecclesiastical and civil, in order to de-
velop her community. If she continued to write innovative poetry, as
Hugh Metel mentions in his two letters to her, she never had it circulate
under her own name. She even beneted from the support of Bernard of
Clairvaux when asking for a favor from the papal court.66 Not the least
of her achievements was to bring together in an original and creative
synthesis the best elements of Cistercian tradition with hymns, prayers,
and other writings of Abelard. What she herself added to this fusion is
shrouded by her personal modesty.
When Heloise was buried alongside Abelard at the Paraclete, over two
decades later, another epitaph was added to the tomb:
Hoc tumulo abbatissa iacet prudens Heloysa;
Paraclitum statuit, cum Paraclito requiescit.
Gaudia sanctorum sua sunt super alta polorum.
Nos meritis precibusque suis exaltet ab imis.
[In this tomb lies the prudent abbess Heloise;
She established the Paraclete, she rests with the Paraclete.
The joys of the saints are hers, beyond the height of the pole star.
May she raise us from the depths by her merits and prayers.]
Her epitaph, less concise and more conventional in wording than that
which rested on the tomb of Abelard, is a modest witness to the esteem
and devotion she generated among those who knew her.
Notes
Introduction
1. Peter the Venerable, letter 115, in The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed.
Giles Constable (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 1:3038.
2. Heloise, Ep. II (Hicks, 49).
3. Jean de Meun, Le Roman dela Rose, ed. Daniel Poirion (Paris: Garnier-
Flammarion, 1974), 25354, lines 880232.
4. Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions
of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999).
1. Images of Abelard and Heloise

1. References to HC are to the page of the edition by Jacques Monfrin, Historia
calamitatum (Paris: Vrin, 1959). The Latin text of HC and Ep. IIVII is presented
alongside the translation of these letters made by Jean de Meun in the thirteenth
century, La vie et les epistres Pierres Abaelart et Heloys sa fame 1, ed. Eric Hicks
(Paris: Honore Champion, 1991), 344.
2. Ep. II (Hicks, 53).
3. HC (Monfrin, 63).
4. Bernard, letter 190.1 (SBO 8:1718).
6. Bernard, letter 190.3, 9 (SBO 8:19, 24).
7. Bernard, letter 190.11 (SBO 8:26). In the revised version of the treatise,
Bernard added a reference to this doctrine also expounded in Abelards commen-
tary on Pauls Epistle to the Romans.
251
252 notes to pages 1115
8. Bernard, letter 190.22 (SBO 8:36); Abelard, Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:
11718).
11. Printed as letter 194 among the letters of Bernard (SBO 8:4648). For
further details on the Council of Sens, see chap. 11.
12. Berengar of Poitiers, Apologia, ed. Rodney M. Thomson, The Satirical
Works of Berengar of Poitiers, MS 42 (1980): 89138, esp. 11130.
13. John, Metalogicon 1.5 (CCCM 98:20).
14. John, Metalogicon 2.10, 3.1, 3.6 (CCCM 98:70, 102, 122).
16. Hugh Metel, letter 16, quoted in Constant J. Mews, Hugh Metel, Heloise
and Peter Abelard: The Letters of an Augustinian Canon and the Challenge of
Innovation in Twelfth-Century Lorraine, Viator 32 (2001): 8990.
17. Cartulaire de labbaye du Paraclet, ed. C. Lalore, Collection des principaux
cartulaires du dioce`se de Troyes 2 (Paris: Thorin, 1878), nos. 4244 [1372, 1381,
1396], pp. 5762. For the argument that the Troyes manuscript was subsequently
returned to the Paraclete, and a review of changing attitudes to Abelard and
Heloise in later centuries, see Constant J. Mews, La bibliothe`que du Paraclet du
XIIIe sie`cle a` la Revolution, Studia Monastica 27 (1985):3167 (reprinted in
Reason and Belief ).
18. Monfrin discusses the two different forms of the title page in his intro-
duction to the Historia calamitatum, 32. The Duchesne version was titled Petri
Abaelardi sancti Gildasii in Britannia abbatis et Heloisae conjugis ejus . . . Opera.
19. Francois de Grenaille, Nouveau recueil de lettres des dames tant anciennes
que modernes (Paris: Toussainct Quinet, 1642), 1:273381.
20. Jules Michelet, Histoire de France, reprinted in Oeuvres comple`tes, ed. Paul
Viallaneix (Paris: Flammarion, 1974), 4:45259. In an appendix to this edition,
based on that of 1861 (4:64041, 64851, 688), Robert Casanova documents
these passages as they stood in the rst edition of 1833, in which Michelet sub-
sequently modied certain passages more critical of Abelard and his logic after
reading the work of Cousin (1836), Remusat (1845), and Haureau (1850). In an
introduction, however, Jacques Le Goff notes that Michelet became generally
more hostile to the Middle Ages, certainly by 1855 (4:5457).
21. Victor Cousin, Ouvrages inedits dAbelard pour servir a` lhistoire de la philo-
sophie scolastique en France (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1836). The long and impor-
tant introduction to this study was reprinted within Fragments philosophiques pour
servir a` lhistoire de la philosophie, 5th ed. (Paris: Durand-Didier, 1865), 1217. See
Maurice de Gandillac, Sur quelques images dAbelard au temps du roi Louis-
Philippe, in Abelard en son temps, ed. Jean Jolivet (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1981),
197209. Translations of Cousins lectures were published in the United States
from as early as 1832: Introduction to the History of Philosophy, trans. H. G. Linberg
(Boston, 1832), and Course of the History of Modern Philosophy, trans. O. W.
Wright (New York: Appleton, 1852).
22. Cousin, Ouvrages inedits, iv.
23. Ibid., lx.
notes to pages 1522 253
24. Ibid., lx.

25. For further bibliographical details and discussion of the history of the au-
thenticity question, see LLL, 4353.
26. Charles de Remusat, Abelard (Paris: Ladrange, 1845).
27. S. Martin Deutsch, Peter Abalard: Ein kritischer Theologe des zwolften Jahr-
hunderts (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1883).
28. Henry Adams, From Mont St Michel to Chartres (1904; Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1986), 27071.
29. Etienne Gilson, Helose et Abelard, 3rd rev. ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1984). See
also the English version of this work, Heloise and Abelard, trans. L. K. Shook
(London: Hollis & Carter, 1953).
30. Peter von Moos, Le silence dHelose et les ideologies modernes, in Pierre
AbelardPierre le Venerable: les courants philosophiques, litteraires et artistiques en
occident au milieu du XIIe sie`cle, ed. Jean Jolivet and Rene Louis (Paris: CNRS,
1975); and von Moos, Mittelalterforschung und Ideologiekritik: Der Gelehrtenstreit um
Helose (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1974). Von Moos argued that the letters
were by a single author in Heloise und Abaelard, in Gefalscht: Betrug in Politik,
Literatur, Wissenschaftliche Kunst und Musik, ed. Karl Corino (Nordlingen: Greno,
1988), 15061, but nuanced his position in an important study, Abaelard, He-
loise, und ihr Paraklet: ein Kloster nach Mass. Zugleich eine Streitschrift gegen
die ewige Wiederkehr hermeneutische Naivitat, in Das Eigene und das Ganze:
Zum Individuellen im mittelalterlichen Religiosentum, ed. Gert Melville and Th.
Schurer, Vita regularis 16 (Munster: LIT Verlag, 2002), 563620.
31. Barbara Newman, Authority, Authenticity, and the Repression of Helo-
ise, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22 (1992): 12157 (reprinted in
From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature [Phil-
adelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995], 4675).
32. A range of perspectives, reecting many different strands of feminist
thought, are presented in Bonnie Wheeler, ed., Listening to Heloise: The Voice of
a Twelfth-Century Woman (New York: St. Martins Press, 2000).
33. Jean Jolivet, Arts du langage et theologie chez Abelard (Paris: Vrin, 1969).
34. David E. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard: The Inuence of Abelards
Thought in the Early Scholastic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1969).
35. Michael T. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).
36. John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997).
37. Ibid., 2089.
2. The Early Years

1. Richard of Poitiers, Cronicon (MGH Scriptores 26:81).
3. Roscelin of Compie`gne, Epistola ad Abaelardum (Reiners, 63, 65; PL 178:
357C, 360C).
4. On the politics surrounding the accusations against Roscelin, see Constant
J. Mews, St Anselm, Roscelin, and the See of Beauvais, in Anselm: Aosta, Bec
and Canterbury: Proceedings in Commemoration of the Nine-Hundredth Anniversary
of Anselms Enthronement as Archbishop, 25 September 1093, ed. David E. Luscombe
and Gillian R. Evans (Shefeld: University of Shefeld Press, 1996), 10619 (re-
printed in Reason and Belief).
5. Ibid., 11718.
6. Boethius, In Cat. 3 (PL 64:252C).
7. Abelard says that he had once seen a copy of the Sophistical Refutations but
was not sure of its authenticity (LI sup. Per. [Geyer, 400.18]). He also refers to
both Prior and Posterior Analytics in LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 394.1026) but mistakenly
attributes to Posterior Analytics what is in the Prior Analytics, which he refers to
only briey for its denition of a syllogism in the Dialectica (de Rijk, 232:45,
233.35234.3).
8. Boethius, In Cat. 1 (PL 64:159C).
9. I follow the usage here of William T. Parry and Edward A. Hacker, Aris-
totelian Logic (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1991), 45.
10. Boethius, In Per. prima editio I.1.1 (Meiser, 37).
11. Augustine, De doctrina Christiana 1.4 (CSEL 80:9).
12. Otto, Gesta Friderici 1.49 (Waitz and von Simson, 69); John, Metalogicon
2.17 (CCCM 98:81.19).
13. Anselm, De incarnatione Verbi, in Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt
(Edinburgh: T. S. Nelson, 19461961), 2:910.
14. De Rijk attributed the text to an earlier gure, Garlandus Compotista, in
his edition of the Dialectica (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1959). Iwakuma convincingly
argued that it was written by a younger Gerlandus from the same city (Vocales,
or Early Nominalists, Traditio 47 (1992): 37111, esp. 4754. While its author
refers to himself as Jarlandus, the work is attributed in manuscript to Gerlandus,
a spelling that will be preserved.
15. Gerland, Dialectica (de Rijk, 14.1415).
16. Ibid. (p. 1).
17. Ibid. (p. 2).
18. Ibid. (p. 18).
19. Eleanor Stump places his teaching within a broader context (following de
Rijks identication of the author) in her chapter Dialectic, in The Seven Liberal
Arts in the Middle Ages, ed. David L. Wagner (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1986), 12546, esp. 13538; and in Stump, Garlandus Compotista and
Dialectic in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, History and Philosophy of Logic
1 (1980): 118.
20. Iwakuma, Vocales, or Early Nominalists, 49; and I. Rosier, Note sur une
surprenante citation des Topiques dAristote au XIe sie`cle, Bulletin de philosophie
medievale 28 (1986): 17884.
21. Iwakuma edits excerpts from the glosses in Vocales, or Early Nominalists,
6265, 10311; see also Iwakuma, Pierre Abelard et Guillaume de Champeaux
dans les premie`res annees du XIIe sie`cle: Une etude preliminaire, in Langage,
sciences, philosophie au XIIe sie`cle, ed. Joel Biard (Paris: Vrin, 1999), 96.
22. Gerland, Dialectica 1 (de Rijk, 34.2224).

23. Ibid., 3, 4 (pp. 76, 107).
24. On these Glosule, see Margaret T. Gibson, The Early Scholastic Glosule
to Priscian, Institutiones Grammaticae: The Text and Its Inuences, Studi Medi-
evali, 3rd ser., 20 (1979): 3554. Ire`ne Rosier edits the section of the vox in Le
commentaire des Glosulae et des Glosae de Guillaume de Conches sur le chapitre
De Voce des Institutiones Grammaticae de Priscien, CIMAGL 63 (1993): 11544.
25. See Constant J. Mews, Nominalism and Theology before Abaelard: New
Light on Roscelin of Compie`gne, Vivarium 30 (1992): 433 (reprinted in Reason
and Belief ),
26. Anselm of Canterbury, De grammatico 21 (Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. Fran-
ciscus Salesius Schmitt, 7 vols. [Edinburgh: Nelson, 19381970], 1:166).
27. The glosses of William of Conches survive in two recensions, one from
the 1120s and the other from around 1140. See Edouard Jeauneau, Deux redac-
tions des gloses de Guillaume de Conches sur Priscien, RTAM 27 (1960): 212
47; and Rosier, Les commentaires des Glosulae et des Glosae, 13144.
28. LLL, 6162, 70.
29. First identied by Yukio Iwakuma, The Introductiones dialecticae secundum
Wilgelmum and secundum magistrum G. Paganellum, CIMAGL 63 (1993): 45114.
Iwakuma argues in a 1992 essay that both texts are to be attributed to William,
and that the Introductiones sec. Mag. G. Paganellum, found in an Escorial manu-
script, is earlier than the version secundum Wilgelmum, found in a Vienna man-
uscript (William of Champeaux and the Introductiones, in Aristotles Periherme-
neias in the Latin Middle Ages: Essays in the Commentary Tradition (Groningen/
Haren: Ingenium, 2003), 130.
30. Introductiones sec. Mag. G. Paganellum I.1 (Iwakuma, 88).
31. Introductiones sec. Wilgelmum I.1, III.5.1 (Iwakuma, 57, 73); Introductiones
Porphyrii II.6 (Iwakuma, The Introductiones dialecticae, 110).
32. John, Metalogicon 3.9 (CCCM 98:129.4346). Williams notes on this sub-
ject follow the Introductiones dialecticae 3 (Iwakuma, 11214).
33. Introductiones sec. Wilgelmum IV.1.5 (Iwakuma, 78); this is part of a larger
discussion of media in IV (Iwakuma, 7580). In the Escorial version the Introd-
uctiones sec. Mag. G. Paganellum III include a comparable discussion of media
(Iwakuma, 11214).
34. On these reports of Williams understanding of the topics, see Niels J.
Green-Pedersen, William of Champeaux on Boethius Topics according to Or-
leans Bibl. Mun. 266, CIMAGL 13 (1974): 1330; and Green-Pedersen, The
Tradition of the Topics in the Middle Ages (Munich: Philosophia, 1984), 16567.
35. Iwakuma summarizes his research into these glosses in Pierre Abelard et
Guillaume de Champeaux, (see n. 21). John Marenbon summarizes this research
of Iwakuma into these glosses in Medieval Latin Commentaries and Glosses on
Aristotelian Logical Texts, before c. 1150 AD, published with Supplement to
the Working Catalogue in Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early
Medieval Philosophy in the West (London: Variorum, 2000), 77127 and 12840.
He comments on this material in Glosses and Commentaries on the Categories
and De interpretatione before Abelard, in Aristotelian Logic, 2149. These glosses

survive in more than one recension: on Porphyry (P3), on the Categories (C8),
on the Periermeneias (H11), and the De differentiis topicis (B8). See also C. H.
Kneepkens, From Eternal to Perpetual Truths: A Note on the Medieval History
of Aristotle, De Interpretatione, Ch. 1 16a18, Vivarium 22 (1994): 16185.
36. Marenbon discusses C8, attributed by Iwakuma to William, in Glosses
and Commentaries, 3639.
37. Mary Dickey raised the possibility that In primis was a work of William of
Champeaux, and observed its relationship to a commentary of Manegold. See her
essay, Some Commentaries on the De inventione and Ad Herennium of the Elev-
enth and Early Twelfth Centuries, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1968): 1
41. See further K. M. Fredborg, The Commentaries on Ciceros De inventione and
Rhetorica ad Herennium by William of Champeaux, CIMAGL 17 (1976): 139,
esp. 13, which quotes examples about canons having to provide lodgings for stu-
dents. Final judgment on authorship must await a critical edition of In primis being
prepared by John O. Ward and Juanita Ruys.
38. Uta-Renata Blumenthal, ed., The Early Councils of Pope Paschal II 1100
1108 (Toronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), 9297. Blumen-
thal notes the presence of William of Champeaux as archdeacon on pp. 8081.
39. HC (Monfrin, 65.6669).
40. LLL, 6971.
41. Codex Udalrici 160, in Monumenta Bambergensia, ed. Philipp Jaffe, Biblio-
theca rerum germanicarum 5 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1869), 28587. This letter re-
ports that William retreated to an impoverished little church, where he offered
teaching in divine and human sciences free of charge. The letter is translated
in an appendix to Manegold of Lautenbach, Liber contra Wolfelmum, trans. Robert
Ziomkowski, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 1 (Louvain: Peeters, 2002),
12122.
42. Glosule in Priscianum, cited in Rosier, ed., Les commentaires des Glosulae
et des Glosae, 12223.
43. HC (Monfrin, 67.13940).
44. Vita Goswini, quoted in Bouquet, Recueil 14:444.
45. Ed. Per. (Dal Pra, 85.1328).
46. John, Metalogicon 3.1 (CCCM 98:103.113).
47. Iwakuma, Pierre Abelard et Guillaume de Champeaux, 94.
48. Ed. Por. (Dal Pra, 3.13).
49. A very similar version of the same gloss of Abelard, without certain extra
details, is found in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 14779, ff. 30v36v,
edited by Iwakuma Y., Vocales, or Early Nominalists, 5762, 74102. While
attributed here to Roscelin, Iwakuma has subsequently reassigned the text to Ab-
elard (see n. 21).
50. Ed. Por. (Dal Pra, 8.1722); cf. William of Champeaux, Introductiones
Porphyrii 8.2 (Iwakuma, The Introductiones dialecticae, 111).
51. Ed. Por. (Dal Pra, 18.1112).
52. Ed. Por. (Dal Pra, 23.724.40).
53. Ed. Por. (Dal Pra, 32.1534.32).

54. Ed. Cat. (Dal Pra, 54.2255.22).
55. Ed. Cat. (Dal Pra, 58.39, 62.34, 63.40).
56. Marenbon argues that the gloss on the Periermeneias in Munich, Clm
14779 (known as H5) is a fuller record of Abelards early glosses than that in the
Paris manuscript, edited by Dal Pra. See Marenbon, Glosses and Commentaries
on the Categories and De interpretatione, 4449.
57. Abelard refers to these glosses of William in Dial. (de Rijk, 141.2430).
They are perhaps to be identied with the glosses referred to as H9 within Mar-
enbon, Supplement to the Working Catalogue, Aristotelian Logic 118 and 137.
Marenbon comments on these in Glosses and Commentaries on the Categories
and De interpretatione, 4041.
58. Ed. Per. (Dal Pra, 74.3542).
59. Ed. Per. (Dal Pra, 77.2284.16).
60. Ed. Per. (Dal Pra, 127.3135, 131.3032).
61. Ed. Per. (Dal Pra, 133.1820).
62. This text is from Munich, Clm 14479, f. 53v, and is cited in Iwakuma,
Pierre Abelard et Guillaume de Champeaux, 95, with the correction of his early
attribution of these glosses to Roscelin.
63. See Categories 6a10. On Abelards stature, see Vita Goswini 1.4, ed. Bou-
quet, Recueil 14:443: exilis corpulentiae et staturae non sublimis. Michael T.
Clanchy discusses this reference to Abelards size, but thinks it could refer to
Goswin. See Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 176.
Yet Abelard was referred to elsewhere as magistrellus or parvus magister; see David
E. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard: The Inuence of Abelards Thought in the
Early Scholastic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 225 n. 3.
64. Ed. Div. (Dal Pra, 170.1317).
65. Ed. Per. (Dal Pra, 171.20); on this distinction in the Glosule on Priscian,
see Mews, Nominalism and Theology, 1516.
66. Iwakuma also identies as the work of Abelard as yet unedited glosses on
the De differentiis topicis in Munich, Clm 14479, ff. 87r105v and Paris, BnF
7094A, ff. 92rb95va, on the De syllogismo categorico on ff. 92ra83rb of the latter
manuscript, and on the De syllogismo hypothetico on ff. 67v86v of the Munich
manuscript. See Iwakuma, Pierre Abelard et Guillaume de Champeaux, 94.
67. Dial. 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 4.1(de Rijk, 173.32174.3, 232.812, 268.36269.3,
329.47, 352.1416, 482.4).
68. Sent. (Minio-Paluello, 114).
69. Sent. (Minio-Paluello, 11519); see also C. H. Kneepkens, Mulier Quae
Damnavit, Salvavit: A Note of the Early Development of the Relatio Simplex,
Vivarium 14 (1976):125.
70. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 397).
71. Joscelin may have held this position ca. 11101112, when his student
Goswin challenged Abelard in disputation (Vita Goswini, in Bouquet, Recueil 14:
444). Suger dedicated his history of Louis VI to Joscelin of Vierzy, Vie de Louis
VI le Gros, ed. Henri Waquet (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1964).
72. See Theresa Gross-Diaz, The Psalms Commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers: From
Lectio divina to the Lecture Room (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
73. See Nikolaus Haring, The Sententiae Magistri A. (Vat. Ms. lat. 4361)
and the School of Laon, Mediaeval Studies 17 (1955): 145; and Pauline Hen-
riette Joanna Theresia Maas, The Liber Sententiarum Magistri A: Its Place Amidst
the Sentences Collections of the First Half of the 12th Century, Middeleeuwse studies
11 (Nijmegen: Centrum voor Middeleeuwse studies, 1996).
74. Sententie Anselmi, in Anselms von Laon systematische Sentenzen, ed. Franz
Bliemetzrieder, BGPMA 18.23 (Munster: Aschendorff, 1919), 47106. In Mu-
nich, Clm 14730, ff. 7382, it is called Sententie a magistro Wutolfo collecte, perhaps
a reference to these sentences having been recorded by Lotulf of Novara.
75. Sententie Anselmi (Bliemetzrieder, 71); see also R. Blomme, La doctrine du
peche dans les ecoles theologiques de la premie`re moitie du XIIe sie`cle (Louvain: Uni-
versite catholique, 1958), 5253 n. 1; and Luscombe, School of Peter Abelard,
176.
76. Sententie Anselmi (Bliemetzrieder, 8184, and on marriage, 12951). On
marriage theory in the school of Anselm, see Heinrich J. F. Reinhardt, Die Ehelehre
der Schule des Anselm von Laon, BGPTMA n.s. 14 (Munster: Aschendorff, 1974).
77. Many individual sentences attributed to both Anselm and William of
Champeaux are edited from the Liber pancrisis by Odon Lottin, Psychologie et
Morale au XIIe et XIIIe sie`cles (Gembloux: Duculot, 1959), vol. 5.
78. On the sacraments, see William, Sententie, nos. 5767 (Lottin, 5358).
79. William, Sententie no. 236, p. 191.3941.
81. William, Sententie no. 236, p. 194.205210).
82. Ibid., p. 191.6162.
83. Bliemetzrieder edited the Sententie divine pagine as another product of the
school of Anselm of Laon (Anselms von Laon systematische Sentenzen, 346); sig-
nicant contrasts between this work and Principium et causa omnium (Sententie
Anselmi) must put a question mark by this claim.
84. Sententie divine pagine (Bliemetzrieder, 6, 78).
85. Ibid. (p. 9).
86. William, Sententie no. 236, p. 193.
87. Ibid. no. 261, p. 211.
88. Ibid., p. 212.
89. Ibid. no. 251, p. 205); see also the broader discussion in nos. 24660,
pp. 20310.
90. Ibid. no. 243, p. 201.
91. Ibid. no. 253, p. 206.
92. Ibid. no. 259, p. 210.
94. Geoffrey of Courlon, Chronicon Senonense, Chronique de labbaye de
Saint-Pierre-le-Vif de Sens redigee vers la n du XIIIe sie`cle par Geoffrey de Courlon,
ed. Gustave Julliot (Sens, 1876), 472. Abelard has Heloise refer to him as clericum
atque canonicum in HC (Monfrin, 78). On the link of Stephen of Garlande
with Sens, see Constant J. Mews, The Council of Sens (1141): Abelard, Bernard,
and the Fear of Social Upheaval, Speculum 77 (2002): 34282, esp. 354
n. 39.
95. Chron. Maur. (Mirot, 33, 42, 6567). Conon, also known as Cuno, was
an Augustinian canon who had established a new order of Arrouaise, in the
diocese of Lie`ge, in 1107.
96. Michael Casey observes this inconsistency in the account of William of
St.-Thierry in Bernard and the Crisis at Morimond: Did the Order Exist in 1124?
Cistercian Studies Quarterly 38 (2003): 11975, esp. 122 n. 8.
97. Rupert of Deutz reports this, without mentioning Clairvaux, in a treatise
written only a few years after Williams death (De vita apostolica 5.16 [PL 163:
659C660C]). The detail that he took the habit at Clairvaux eight days before
his death is mentioned by Symeon of Durham (d. 1129), Historia regum, in Sy-
meonis monachi opera omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols., Rolls Series 75 (London, 1882
1885), 2:25960, in turn repeated by Roger of Hoveden, Historia post Bedam, in
Chronica Rogeri de Hovedene, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols., Rolls Series 51 (London,
18681871), 1:178. William is not reported as having taken a habit in the ne-
crologies of Chalons-sur-Marne and of Molesme, which mention his death on
January 18, or of St.-Victor, which gives it as Jan. 25, 1122.
3. Challenging Tradition
1. Dial. 2.1 and 5.1 (de Rijk, 146.2129, 142.15, and 535.7).
2. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 319.16). On its date, see Constant J. Mews, On Dating
the Works of Peter Abelard, AHDLMA 52 (1985): 7489 (reprinted in Abelard
and His Legacy); and John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 4045, whose arguments for a pre-1117 date
for most of the work I am inclined to accept.
3. Dial. 5.1 (de Rijk, 554.37). On the references to magister noster (V.) as to
William of Champeaux rather than to Ulger of Angers, see Yukio Iwakuma,
Pierre Abelard et Guillaume de Champeaux dans les premie`res annees du XIIe
sie`cle: Une etude preliminaire, in Langage, sciences, philosophie au XIIe sie`cle, ed.
Joel Biard (Paris: Vrin, 1999), 102 n. 2.
4. Dial. 1.2.2 (de Rijk, 67.515).
5. Dial. 1.2.2 (de Rijk, 73.35).
6. Dial. 1.2.3 (de Rijk, 77.30).
7. Dial. 1.2.3 (de Rijk, 103.9).
8. Categories 7b24; Boethius, In Cat. 2 (PL 64:218A).
9. Dial. 1.2.3 (de Rijk, 85.1015).
10. Boethius, In Per. II 2.7 (Meiser, 2:137.726).
11. Dial. 1.2.3 (de Rijk, 85.11); see also LI (Geyer, 211, 214).
12. Dial. 1.2.3 (de Rijk, 86.912); cf. Boethius, In Cat. 2 (PL 64:217C).
13. Dial. 1.2.3 (de Rijk, 91.2326); cf. Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis 2.14
(ed. J. Willis [Leipzig: Teubner, 1963], 629).
14. Dial. 1.2.3 (de Rijk, 86.912); cf. Boethius, In Cat. 2 (PL 64:217C).
15. Dial. 1.2.3 (de Rijk, 92.23).

16. Dial. 1.3.1 (de Rijk, 112.2428).
17. Dial. 1.3.1 (de Rijk, p. 113.15114.15).
18. Dial. 1.3.1 (de Rijk, 114.30).
19. Dial. 1.3.3 (de Rijk, 130.67). A marginal note in the manuscript explains
the distinction between Priscian and Donatus on this point in more detail. Given
that the same hand develops ideas in the Dialectica in a number of such marginal
glosses, as well as corrects the entire text in minute detail, it is quite possible they
have been added by Abelard himself.
20. Dial. 1.3.3 (de Rijk, 131.2636).
21. Gerland, Dialectica 3 (de Rijk, 79.280.8).
22. Dial. 1.3.3 (de Rijk, 135.28).
23. Dial. 1.3.3 (de Rijk, 135.32138.3).
24. Dial. 1.3.3 (de Rijk, 141.2930).
25. Dial. 2.1 (de Rijk, 146.1720).
26. Dial. 2.1 (de Rijk, 148.19151.4); cf. William, Introductiones 1.1.68
(Iwakuma, The Introductiones dialecticae, 57).
27. Dial. 2.1 (de Rijk, 151.15, 152.23); cf. William, Introductiones 1.1.7 (Iwak-
uma, The Introductiones dialecticae,5758).
28. Dial. 2.1 (de Rijk, 154.2023).
29. Boethius, In Per. II.1.1 (Meiser, 2:33.28).
30. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 186.1617, 187.1013); cf. William, Introductiones 1.2.2
31. See, for example, Dial. 2.2 and 5.1 (de Rijk, 202.9 and 574.18).
32. Dial. 2.1 (de Rijk, 155.25157.27).
33. Dial. 2.1 (de Rijk, 160.1436).
34. Dial. 2.1 (de Rijk, 168.11170.30).
35. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 177.7179.37).
36. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 175.2936, 183.1819).
37. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 191.511, 194.2426).
39. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 194.2526).
40. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 195.2730, 200.720, 201.12).
41. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 199.25203.6).
43. A small indication of the originality of Roscelins analysis of a proposition
may be preserved in a report within the Introductiones Montanae majores in which
Roscelin argues that a proposition consists only of its terms, and thus remains the
same when the terms are converted; quoted by Jean Jolivet, Trois variations
medievales sur luniversel et lindividu: Roscelin, Abelard, Gilbert de la Porree,
Revue de Metaphysique et Morale 97 (1992): 128 n. 50.
44. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 213.2128).
45. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 217.17222.25).
46. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 228.930).
47. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 263.1214).
48. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 253.28254.1).
49. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 271.35273.33).

50. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 274.2429).
51. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 277.3337); cf. Gerland, Dialectica 4 (de Rijk, 106.27
32).
52. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 285.34).
53. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 285.1619).
54. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 286.31287.5).
55. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 295.3538).
56. William, Introductiones 7 (Iwakuma, 9596).
57. John, Metalogicon 3.6 (CCCM 98:122.2129); Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 285.4).
58. Dial. 3.1 (de Rijk, 319.16).
59. Dial. 3.2 (de Rijk, 416.31417.37).
60. Dial. 3.2 (de Rijk, 421.32422.32).
61. Dial. 3.2 (de Rijk, 460.33461.11).
62. Dial. 3.2 (de Rijk, 462.11).
63. Dial. 4.1 (de Rijk, 469.59).
64. HC (Monfrin, 82). Marenbon argues that Abelard should have specied
his status as a monk if he was writing this prologue after becoming a monk at St.-
Denis (The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, 4142).
65. Dial. 4.1 (de Rijk, 470.31471.10).
66. Dial. 4.1 (de Rijk, 478.35).
67. Dial. 4.1 (de Rijk, 484.3639, 488.710).
68. Dial. 4.1 (de Rijk, 487.1120).
69. Dial. 4.1 (de Rijk, 496.1826).
70. Dial. 5.1 (de Rijk, 535.811).
71. Dial. 5.1 (de Rijk, 541.24552.11).
72. Dial. 5.1 (de Rijk, 544.721).
73. Dial. 5.1 (de Rijk, 548.1115).
74. Dial. 5.1 (de Rijk, 549.37550.17).
75. Dial. 5.1 (de Rijk, 558.1835).
76. Chapter 6, n. 18.
77. William of Conches, Glosae super Platonem, ed. Edouard Jeauneau (Paris:
Vrin, 1965), 145, 14849, with valuable further material in notes to these pas-
sages. See also Tullio Gregory, Anima mundi: La losoa di Guglielmo di Conches e
la scuola di Chartres (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1955), 1516.
78. Dial. 5.1 (de Rijk, 572.2633).
79. Dial. 5.1 (de Rijk, 574.1820).
80. Dial. 5.1 (de Rijk, 576.3537).
81. Dial. 5.2 (de Rijk, 583.613).
82. Dial. 5.2 (de Rijk, 585.28586.24).
4. Heloise and Discussion about Love

1. Roscelin of Compie`gne, Epistola ad Abaelardum, in Der Nominalismus in der
Fruhscholastik: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Universalienfrage im Mittelalter, ed.
Joseph Reiners (Munster: Aschendorff, 1910), 78; and PL 178:369BC.
2. HC (Monfrin, 71.28688).
Giles Constable (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 1:3034).
4. In Heloisas Herkunft: Hersindis mater (Munich: Olzog, 2001), Werner Robl
argues that Heloises mother, Hersindis (recorded as having died on December 1,
according to the obituary of the Paraclete), was the same Hersindis who was
prioress of Fontevrault (recorded as having died on November 30, according to
the Fontevrault necrology), herself a daughter of Hubert III of Champagne.
5. HC (Monfrin, 71.28899).
6. HC (Monfrin, 73.33539).
7. HC (Monfrin, 73.35669).
8. HC (Monfrin, 75.41518).
9. HC (Monfrin, 78.52733).
10. HC (Monfrin, 78.54549).
14. Ewald Konsgen, Epistolae duorum amantium: Briefe Abaelards und Heloises?
(Leiden: Brill, 1974). The Latin text, with a translation by Chiavaroli and Mews,
is presented in LLL, 190289.
15. Konsgen, Epistolae duorum amantium, 103. In a detailed study, Peter von
Moos argues that these letters were composed by a single author from the later
medieval period, claiming (rather improbably) that they demonstrate the inuence
of the theory of Aelred of Rievaulx on spiritual friendship and of Augustinian
theories of love, without clearly identifying the contrast between the two voices
in the exchange. See von Moos, Die Epistolae duorum amantium und die sakulare
Religion der Liebe: Methodenkritische Voruberlegungen zu einem einmaligen
Werk mittellateinischer Brieiteratur, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser., 44 (2003): 1115.
I am indebted to Sylvain Piron for observing the absence of any allusion to Ar-
istotles Ethics.
16. For a full survey of the literary genre of love letters included within epis-
tolary treatises, although unfortunately not of the Epistolae duorum amantium, see
Ernstpeter Ruhe, De amasio ad amasiam: Zur Gattungsgeschichte des mittelalterlichen
Liebesbriefes, Beitrage zur romanischen Philologie des Mittelalters 10 (Munich:
Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1975). The Epistolae duorum amantium are examined in light
of evolving practices of the ars dictaminis by John O. Ward and Neville Chiavaroli,
The Young Heloise and Latin Rhetoric: Some Preliminary Comments on the
Lost Love Letters and Their Signicance, in Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a
Twelfth-Century Woman, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: St Martins Press, 2000),
53119. For further discussion, see C. Stephen Jaeger, The Epistolae duorum
amantium and the Ascription to Heloise and Abelard, with a further exchange
between Jaeger and Giles Constable, forthcoming in Voices in Dialogue: Reading
Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Linda Olson (Notre
Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press).
17. Konsgen, Epistolae duorum amantium, 15, 23, 26, 39, 44, identies allusions
to phrases in Jeromes letters in letters 25, 45, 49, 69, and 76; LLL, 13839 and
353 n. 94.
18. Ep. VI (Hicks, 88); see chap. 8, n. 24.
19. See, for example, Bernard, letter 11 (SBO 7:55), and De diligendo Deo 34
(SBO 3:149).
20. Cicero, De inventione 2.55: cum eius pari voluntate De ofciis 1.17: ut
unus at e pluribus.
21. Cicero, De amicitia 15: voluntatum studiorum summa consensio; 26:
amor enim, ex quo amicitia nominata est, princeps est ad benivolentiam con-
iungendam; 58: paribus ofciis et voluntatibus; 61: voluntatum sine ulla ex-
ceptione communitas; 81: cuius animum ita cum suo misceat, ut efciat paene
unum ex duobus; 92: ut unus quasi animus at ex pluribus. Ambrose repeated
this formula in his own De ofciis 1.34, ed. M. Testard (Paris: Bude, 1984, 1992),
180.
22. Ambrose, Expositio in Evangelium secundum. Lucam 10.176 (CCSL 14:397);
Augustine, In Iohannis Epist. ad Parthos 8 (PL 35:2058).
23. Boethius, In Per. II.1.1, II.1.3, II.2.5 (Meiser, 2:19, 68, 1078); cf. Augus-
tine, De de et symbolo 9.19 (CSEL 41:20).
24. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 14); LNp (Geyer, 518).
25. Cf. Cicero, De amicitia 20: quanta autem vis amicitiae sit, ex hoc intellegi
maxime potest quod ex innita societate generis humani quam conciliavit ipsa
natura, ita contracta res est et adducta in angustum, ut omnis caritas aut inter
duos aut inter paucos iungeretur.
26. SN 138.2022.
27. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 186.16).
28. Cicero, De inventione 2.53, is also quoted by Abelard, Collationes 2.132
(Marenbon and Orlandi, 144), and again in TSch 1.34 (13:319).
29. For further detail, see LLL, 9596.
30. For further detail on Baudri, see Gerald Bond, The Loving Subject: Desire,
Eloquence and Power in Romanesque France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, 1995), and LLL, 98101.
31. On Godfrey of Reims and the Ovidian revival, see A. Boutemy, Autour
de Godefroid de Reims, Latomus 6 (1947): 23155; J. R. Williams, Godfrey of
Reims, a Humanist of the Eleventh Century, Speculum 22 (1947): 2945; Wil-
liams, The Cathedral School of Reims in the Eleventh Century, Speculum 29
(1954): 66177; C. S. Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals
in Medieval Europe, 9501200 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1994), 5662. Jean-Yves Tilliette analyzes the importance of Godfrey as a poet in
Troiae ab oris: Aspects de la revolution poetique de la seconde moitie du XIe
sie`cle, Latomus 58 (1999): 40531.
32. William of St.-Thierry, De natura et dignitate amoris, in Deux traites de
lamour de Dieu, ed. M.-M. Davy (Paris: Vrin, 1953), 70137.
33. William, De natura et dignitate amoris 3, 48 (Davy, 72, 128).
34. William relates dilectio only once to amor in De natura et dignitate amoris
26 (Davy, 102), when he quotes the phrase fortis ut mors dilectio (Cant. 8:6). In
his later writing, however, William makes the association more frequently, as in
his Expositio super Cantica 2, 10, 24, 39, ed. P. Verdeyen (CCCM 87:22, 4447,
85, 121); see Bernard, letter 11 (SBO 3:5260), recapitulated in Liber de diligendo
Deo 3436 (SBO 3:14854). Bernard cites the phrase debitum dilectionis in Liber
de diligendo Deo 15 (SBO 3:131) and in Letters 35 and 399 (SBO 7:92 and 8:
379).
35. On Bernards linking of amor and dilectio, itself based on a deeper reading
of Augustine, Origen, and Gregory the Great, see, for example, Liber de diligendo
deo 16 (SBO 3:132), Sermones in Cantica 20.4, 33.2, 46.4, 61.1 (SBO 1:116, 234;
2:57, 148).
36. De diligendo Deo 16 (SBO 3:132).
37. On scibilitas, not found before Abelards Dialectica and Logica Ingredienti-
bus, see chap. 3, n. 11.
38. For an insightful study of this dilemma, see Juanita Feros Ruys, Eloquencie
vultum depingere: Eloquence and Dictamen in the Love Letters of Heloise and
Abelard, in Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 11001540: Essays in Honour
of John O. Ward, ed. Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman, and Rodney M. Thom-
son (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 99112.
39. See Jaeger, The Epistolae duorum amantium (see n. 16); see also the
poems of Godfrey of Reims, edited by Boutemy (see n. 31), or that of an imitator,
Une version medievale inconnue de la legende dOrphee, in Hommages a` Joseph
Bidez et a` Franz Cumont, Collection Latomus 3 (Brussels: Latomus, 1949), 4370.
40. Love Lyrics from the Carmina Burana, ed. P. Walsh (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1993), no. 57 (169), p. 192: Hebet sidus leti visus /
cordis nubilo. . . . In amoris chorea / cunctis prenitet, / cuius nomen a Phebea /
luce renitet / et pro speculo / servit solo; illam colo, / eam volo nutu solo / in
hoc seculo. See David Wulstan, Secular Lyrics from Paris and the Paraclete, in
The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard: An Anthology of Essays by
Various Authors, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan (Ottawa: Institute of Me-
diaeval Music, 2003), 3738, 4142, which suggests that Hebet sidus may come
from later in the relationship.
41. See Wulstan, Secular Lyrics from Paris; Juanita Feros Ruys suggests that
Heloise may be the author of no. 126 in the Carmina burana, which is written in
the voice of a woman who has given birth to a child but is now chastised and
abandoned by her family and lover. See Ruys, Hearing Mediaeval Voices: Heloise
and Carmina Burana 126, in Stewart and Wulstan, eds., Poetic and Musical Legacy
of Heloise and Abelard, 9199.
42. HC (Monfrin, 74; Hicks, 13); Ep. V (Hicks, 79).
43. William G. East, Abelards Anagram, Notes and Queries 240 (1995): 269;
see also Brenda Cook, The Shadow on the Sun: The Name of Abelards Son,
in Stewart and Wulstan, eds., Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard,
15255.
44. Ep. V (Hicks, 78).
5. Returning to Logica
2. HC (Monfrin, 82.66379).
3. These will be referred to as LI sup. Por., LI sup. Praed., LI sup. Per., edited
by Geyer, and as LI sup. Top, edited by Dal Pra, and referred to in LI sup. Per.
(Geyer, 327.35).
4. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 291.25); LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 389.7).
5. LI sup. Top (Geyer, 271.39).
6. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 26.1627.17, 48.4049.9); LI sup. Praed. (Geyer,
298.28299.2); LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 333.2128, 369.611, 426.22431.12).
7. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 186.16, 574.18).
8. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 1.522).
10. John, Metalogicon 2.17 (CCCM 98:81.4344 and 83.1037).
13. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 19.47, 23.1820).
14. Ire`ne Rosier-Catach, La notion de translatio, le principe de composition-
alite et lanalyse de la predication accidentelle chez Abelard, in Langage, sciences,
philosophie au XIIe sie`cle, ed. Joel Biard (Paris: Vrin, 1999), 12564.
15. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 25.2325).
16. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 26.1627.8).
17. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 30.2730).
18. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 45.1223; 46.69).
19. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 54.1431).
20. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 63.3164.41).
21. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 68.3538, 70.3538).
22. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 84.2629).
23. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 89.2125).
24. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 90.1924).
25. LI sup. Por. (Geyer, 105.938).
26. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 111.26).
28. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 121.1115); see also LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 336.14
27, 364.2734, 478.37479.1; and TSum 3.6264 (CCCM 13:184).
29. Boethius, In Cat. (PL 64:166D167A); Ire`ne Rosier-Catach, Prata ri-
dent, in Langages et philosophie: Hommage a` Jean Jolivet, ed. A. de Libera, A.
Elamrani-Jamal, and A. Galonnier (Paris: Vrin, 1997), 15576.
30. Thierry of Chartres, Comm. super Rhetoricam ad Herennium 4.8.11, in The
Latin Rhetorical Commentaries by Thierry of Chartres, ed. Karin M. Fredborg (To-
ronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988), 325; Thierry, Lectiones in
Boethii librum De Trinitate 4.15, in Commentaries by Boethius on Thierry of Chartres
and His School, ed. N. Haring (Toronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1971), 191 and Tractatus super librum Boetii De Trinitate 7, ed. N. Haring, Life and
Works of Clarembald of Arras: A Twelfth-Century Master of the School of Chartres

(Toronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1965), 77.
31. Rosier-Catach, Prata rident, 162.
32. Love Lyrics from the Carmina Burana, ed. P. Walsh (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1993), 17273, with notes about the possible attribution
to Abelard on p. 174. While the love letters often compare the woman to the
sun, as in letter 22, the man calls her his moon in letter 91. She speaks of winter
snows melting and reviving everything in letter 32. Similar metaphors occur in
Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina III.12 (ridet amoenus ager, tectus viridantibus
herbis), and The Cambridge Songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia), ed. and trans. Jan
M. Ziolkowski (Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998),
no. 41, p. 118 (Gaudet polus, ridet tellus, iocundantur omnia), as Sabina Flan-
agan has pointed out to me.
37. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 130.2223, 131.19, 132.2634).
38. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 140.39141.7, 153.3137).
39. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 147.2122, 158.68).
40. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 161.28163.1).
43. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 180.3435; cf. Dial. 1.2.2 (de Rijk, 57.3559.13).
44. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 186.32, quoting Ovid, Ars amatoria 3.62).
47. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 206.3140); Aristotle, Categories 7a6.
49. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 214.2540); see chap. 3, n. 11, chap. 4, n. 37.
53. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 226.34); cf. Dial. 1.2.3 (de Rijk, 93.1420).
57. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 238. 826).
59. LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 251.2633); cf. Boethius, In Cat. 3 (PL 64:261D
262A). Criticisms of Boethius are voiced in LI sup. Praed. (Geyer, 258.59) about
place; (259.1012) about possession; (262.10263.21, 273.56) about opposites.
61. John, Metalogicon 3.4 (CCCM 98:115.1116.38).
62. John, Metalogicon 3.4 (CCCM 98:117.5861).

63. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 307.26308.33).
64. Boethius, In Per. secunda editio 1.1 (Meiser, 2:16); LI sup. Per. (Geyer,
309.1425).
65. Boethius, In Per. secunda editio 1.1 (Meiser, 2:28.229.29).
66. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 315.18318.35).
67. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 315.829).
68. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 328.1729).
69. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 329.1922).
70. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 336.1434).
71. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 337.11339.4).
72. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 339.20340.6).
73. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 348.15349.19).
74. Cf. Dial. 2.1, 3.1 (de Rijk, 160.2636, 372.10).
75. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 360.2627).
76. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 360.3361.11).
77. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 365.31367.12).
78. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 372.127); Boethius, In Per. II.4 (Meiser, 2:92.22
94.30).
79. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 372.37373.34); cf. Dial. 2.1 (de Rijk, 148.19150.35).
80. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 374.13).
81. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 376.15).
82. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 378.58).
83. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 379.7380.16).
84. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 384.3138).
85. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 399.4400.18).
86. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 400.3137); Geyers text here may be corrupt. Abelard
refers to the Sophistical Refutations more condently in LI sup. Per. 18 (Minio-
Paluello, 13.1525) as part of a separate discussion of modal propositions. In the
early 1130s, Abelard quoted the example of Aristotle composing the Sophistical
Refutations to counter false reasoning (Ep. XIV [Smits, 273]).
87. Boethius, In Per. II.2.7 (Meiser, 2:164.22165.5).
88. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 401.830); cf. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 186.16); Boethius,
In Per. II.2.7 (Meiser, 2:135.31); and Aristotle, Periermeneias 17b1.
89. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 396.617, 406.2534).
90. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 408.812); cf. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 180.1718); and
Boethius, In Per. II.2.7 (Meiser, 2:165.6168.26).
91. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 406.619).
92. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 411.2022).
93. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 411.6); cf. Dial. 2.2 (de Rijk, 186.29); see also Ger-
land, Dialectica 2 (de Rijk, 52.25); and William of Champeaux, Introductiones 5.3
94. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 420.30431.12). Marenbon discusses this distinction
within the glosses H9 and H5, otherwise largely dependent on Boethius. See John
Marenbon, Glosses and Commentaries on the Categories and De interpretatione

before Abelard, in Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval
Philosophy in the West (London: Variorum, 2000), 4042.
95. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 421.1626).
96. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 423.2539).
97. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 427.139 and 428.3241), discussing Augustine, De
bono perseverantiae, De praedestinatio sanctorum (also quoted in SN 29.1), and Bo-
ethius, Consolatio philosophiae 4.6.
98. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 427.39428.17).
99. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 429.725).
100. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 439.3134).
101. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 446.3034).
102. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 460.210).
103. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 463.21464.4).
104. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 469.2140).
105. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 479.20480.40).
106. LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 480.38481.3); cf. Dial. 1.3.3 (de Rijk, 135.18
139.11).
107. LI sup. Per. (Minio-Paluello, 384), extending Geyers version of this
passage in LI sup. Per. (Geyer, 483.3497.20). Minio-Paluello (Twelfth-Century
Logic [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1958), xx) argues that the nal part
of this discussion from the Milan manuscript (Geyer, 497.20503.24) is not by
Abelard.
108. LI sup. Per. 1219 (Minio-Paluello, 9.1214.13); I am indebted to Mar-
enbons observation that for Abelard modal statements are always about possi-
bility for rather than possiblity that. See John Marenbon, The Philosophy of
Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 22122, in which
he reviews earlier treatments of this theme by H. Weidemann, Zur Semantik der
Modalbegriffe bei Peter Abelard, Medioevo 7 (1981):140, and Klaus Jacobi,
Statements about Events: Modal and Tense Analysis in Medieval Logic, Vivar-
ium 21 (1983):85107.
109. LI sup. Per. 15 and 18 (Minio-Paluello, 1011 and 13). Earlier, Abelard
had seemed rather doubtful about a text he had seen that claimed to be the
Sophistical Refutations; see chap. 2, n. 6.
110. LI sup. Per. 31 (Minio-Paluello, 20.1319).
111. LI sup. Per. 6172 (Minio-Paluello, 36.2240.29).
112. LI sup. Per. 189 (Minio-Paluello, 82.1825).
113. LI sup. Topica (Dal Pra, 208.16).
114. LI sup. Topica (Dal Pra, 205.1206.33, 287.3639).
115. Fredborg, ed., Latin Rhetorical Commentaries by Thierry of Chartres, 51.45
49. Fredborg comments briey on Thierrys debt to William on p. 12 of her in-
troduction.
116. Abelard refers to a forthcoming treatise on argument in LI sup. Top. (Dal
Pra, 222.28, 242.27), and to a Rhetorica (Dal Pra, 263.25 and 267.1516). For
discussion and a new edition of this section of Abelards gloss sup. Top. (equivalent
to Dal Pra, 256.34268.29), see Karin Margareta Fredborg, Abelard on Rhetoric,

in Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 11001540: Essays in Honour of John O.
Ward, ed. Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman, and Rodney M. Thomson (Turn-
hout: Brepols, 2003), 5580, and my essay in that volume, Peter Abelard on
Dialectic, Rhetoric, and the Principles of Argument, 3753.
117. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 209.2427).
118. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 219.11221.14).
119. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 221.2425).
120. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 231.26235.27).
121. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 239.135).
122. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 222.38223.2); cf. Dial. 3.2 (de Rijk, 459.26
463.3).
123. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 226.12). There is a large literature on Abelards
understanding of the dictum propositionis. See, for example, Christian Strub, Peter
King, and Klaus Jacobi, From intellectus verus/falsus to the dictum propositionis:
The Semantics of Peter Abelard and His Circle, Vivarium 34 (1996): 1540.
124. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 231.26232.40); Niels J. Green-Pedersen, The Tra-
dition of the Topics in the Middle Ages (Munich: Philosophia, 1984), 170.
125. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 234.34).
126. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 235.7236.6).
127. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 242.2022).
128. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 242.27); see also n. 116 above.
129. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 256.34268.29); see the new edition and com-
mentary on this passage provided by Fredborg, n. 116 above. Gabriella DAnna
observed many more passages drawn from the De inventione in this passage than
noted by Dal Pra. See DAnna, Abelardo e Cicerone, Studi Medievali, 3rd. ser.,
10 (1969): 333419, esp. 34052.
130. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 257.10; Fredborg, 1.1, p. 62).
131. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 257.12258.39; Fredborg, 1.1, pp. 6263).
132. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 259.1416; Fredborg, 1.3.1, p. 66).
133. De doctrina Christiana 4.4 (CSEL 80:118).
134. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 260.1731; Fredborg, 1.3.5, p. 68); cf. Karin Mar-
gareta Fredborg, The Commentaries on Ciceros De inventione and Rhetorica ad
Herennium by William of Champeaux, CIMAGL 17 (1976): 139, esp. 1719.
135. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 263.2427, 267.1317; Fredborg, 2, 3.3, pp. 74,
78).
136. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 273.3739).
137. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 290.27).
138. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 294.3).
139. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 294.2131, 296.3841).
140. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 296.421).
141. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 299.4042).
142. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 300.2123).
143. LI sup. Top. (Dal Pra, 301.2528).
144. TSum 2.6 (CCCM 13:116).
6. The Trinity
2. Ep. XIV (Smits, 279).
3. On Roscelins theology and arguments with St. Anselm, see my paper, St.
Anselm and Roscelin of Compie`gne: Some New Texts and Their Implications II:
A Vocalist Essay on the Trinity and Intellectual Debate c. 10801120, AHDLMA
65 (1998): 3990 (reprinted in Reason and Belief).
4. Roscelin of Compie`gne, Epistola ad Abaelardum, in Der Nominalismus in der
Fruhscholastik: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Universalienfrage im Mittelalter, ed.
Joseph Reiners (Munster: Aschendorff, 1910), 65; and PL 178:360CD.
5. Hugh of St.-Victor, De tribus diebus, ed. Dominique Poirel (CCCM 177:3
4). See, for example, Aelred of Rievaulx, De Iesu puero duodenni 3.5 (CCCM 1:
272); Bernard of Clairvaux, Sententia 62 (SBO 6.2:101); Sermo 45 (SBO 6.1:212);
Sermo 1.2 (SBO 4:245); Sermo 3.7 (SBO 4:217).
6. Dominique Poirel, Livre de la nature et debat trinitaire au XIIe siecle: le De
Tribus Diebus de Hugues de Saint-Victor, Bibliotheca Victorina 14 (Turnhout: Bre-
pols, 2002), 13154 and 36879. Ralf Stammberger argues that Hugh draws on
Abelard or common discussion of these ideas. See Stammberger, De longe uer-
itas uidetur diuersa iudicia parit: Hugh of Saint Victor and Peter Abelard, Revista
Portuguesa de Filosoa 58 (2002):6592.
7. Hugh, De tribus diebus (CCCM 177:69).
8. Ambrose, Hexameron 1.5 (CSEL 32.1:15); Poirel, Livre de la nature, 351
52.
9. Hugh, De tribus diebus (CCCM 177:9). Ambrose compares the heavens to
a book in Hexameron 1.6.21 (CSEL 32.1:17).
10. Dominique Poirel traces this strand of patristic tradition in Livre de la
nature, 34560. He observes that while Eustathiuss translation into Latin of Basils
commentary on the Hexaemeron was not known before the mid-twelfth century,
much more widely known was Ambrose, Exp. In Hexaemeron 1.5.18 (CSEL 32.1:
15). Hugh may also have known the potentia/sapientia/voluntas triad in a relatively
rare text of Paschasius Radbertus, De de, spe et caritate 1 (CCCM 97:61).
11. See chap. 2, n. 83.
12. TSum 1.13 (CCCM 13:91).
13. TSum 1.17 (CCCM 13:92).
14. TSum 1.32 (CCCM 13:97); cf. Augustine, De trinitate 2.15, 13.19, 15.6
(CCSL 50:114; 50A:416, 47374).
15. De civitate Dei 6.56 (CCSL 47:17074).
16. TSum 1.35 (CCCM 13:98); see also TSum 2.22 (CCCM 13:121).
17. Manegold of Lautenbach, Liber contra Wolfelmum, trans. Robert Zi-
omkowksi, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 1 (Louvain: Peeters, 2002),
3839.
18. Richard W. Southern, The School of Chartres, in Medieval Humanism
and Other Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), 6185, suggested that a myth had
developed about a school of Chartres and doubted whether most of the teachers
associated with Chartres, notably Gilbert of Poitiers and Thierry of Chartres, really
taught there. Nikolaus Haring has provided a detailed refutation of Southerns
argument, documenting that Bernard was indeed a signicant teacher and that
both Thierry and Gilbert may have moved to Paris only by the late 1130s. See
Haring, Paris and Chartres Revisited, in Essays in Honour of Anton Charles Pegis,
ed. J. R. ODonnell (Toronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974),
268329 See also Peter Dronke, New Approaches to the School of Chartres
(originally published 1971), reprinted in Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe
(Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1992), 1540.
19. TSum 1.5354 (CCCM 13:105).
20. Augustine, En. In Psalmos, Ps. 47.3, 76.17, 78.3, 86.3 (CCSL 38:541; 39:
1063, 1100, 1199); cf. TSum 1.63 (CCCM 13:110).
21. TSum 2.5 (CCCM 13:11516); cf. TChr 2.117 (CCCM 13:185), SN 1.29,
and Collationes 2.76 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 96).
22. TSum 2.27 (CCCM 13:123).
23. TSum 2.29 (CCCM 13:124); cf. William of Champeaux, Sententie, in Psy-
chologie et Morale au XIIe et XIIIe sie`cles, ed. Odon Lottin (Gembloux: Duculot,
1959), no. 236, p. 191.
24. LI (Geyer, 6587).
25. TSum 2.97 (CCCM 13:148).
26. TSum 2.102 (CCCM 13:150); Aristotle, Periermeneias 16a5.
27. TSum 3.1 (CCCM 13:157).
28. TSum 3.5 (CCCM 13:159).
29. TSum 3.10 (CCCM 13:163).
30. TSum 3.1517 (CCCM 13:16465).
31. TSum 3.21 (CCCM 13:16667).
32. TSum 3.31 (CCCM 13:17071).
33. TSum 3.35 (CCCM 13:172).
34. TSum 3.37 (CCCM 13:173).
35. TSum 3.43 (CCCM 13:17576).
36. TSum 3.44 (CCCM 13:176).
37. TSum 3.48 (CCCM 13:177).
38. TSum 3.4850 (CCCM 13:17879).
39. TSum 3.62 (CCCM 13:183).
40. TSum 3.6263 (CCCM 13:18384).
41. TSum 3.6364 (CCCM 13:184).
42. TSum 3.66 (CCCM 13:185).
43. TSum 3.69 (CCCM 13:18687).
44. TSum 3.78 (CCCM 13:191).
45. TSum 3.84 (CCCM 13:194).
46. TSum 3.9798 (CCCM 13:199), discussing Augustine, De trinitate 5.15
(CCSL 50:223).
47. TSum 3.100 (CCCM 13:201): Ex ore tuo te iudico, serve nequam (the
Vulgate form of Luke 19:22 reads De ore; iudico is misprinted as iudicio in the
CCCM edition).
48. TSum 1.30 (CCCM 13:97).

49. Michael T. Clanchy suggests that if the dependency to which Abelard had
moved from St.-Denis was Nogent-sur-Seine, near the future site of the Paraclete,
he was under the jurisidiction of Reims. In fact, it is in the diocese of Troyes,
within the archdiocese of Sens. See Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1998), 296.
50. Chron. Maur. (Mirot, 2527.
51. I. S. Robinson, The Papacy 10731198: Continuity and Innovation (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 43436.
52. Hesso, Relatio de concilio Remensi (MGH Libelli de Lite 3:2829).
53. On the friendship of William and Bernard, see William of Thierrys ac-
count, Bernardi Vita Prima 1.7 (PL 185:245C249B).
54. William of St.-Thierry, De natura et dignitate amoris 49, in Deux traites de
lamour de Dieu, ed. M.-M. Davy (Paris: Vrin, 1953), 12830).
55. William of St.-Thierry, De natura et dignitate amoris 21 (Davy, 98).
56. The latter is identied as Lotulf the Lombard by Heloise in Ep. II (Hicks,
44) and as Leutold of Novara by Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici 1.49 (Waitz-von
Simson, 69. He may have been responsible for collecting the sentences of Anselm
of Laon, according to a rubric in Munich, Clm 14730, ff. 7382 as Sententie a
magistro Wutolfo collecte.
57. See Constant J. Mews, St Anselm and Roscelin: Some New Texts and
Their Implications II: A Vocalist Essay on the Trinity and Intellectual Debate
10801120, AHDLMA 65 (1998): 3990 (reprinted in Reason and Belief). Abe-
lards letter occurs in a manuscript of Bendiktbeuren (dioc. Freising) among texts
all likely to have been known to Otto.
58. Vita Goswini, in Bouquet, Recueil 14:445.
7. A Christian Theologia
1. HC (Monfrin, 8990); Ep. XI (Smits, 24955; PL 178:341A44D).
2. Hymn. Par. (Waddell, nos. 12728, 2:17071; Szoverffy, nos. 1056, 2:218
20). A small chapel at the Paraclete is recorded in later documents as having
been dedicated to St. Denis, a dedication that may go back to the time of Abelard.
3. TSum 2:22 (CCCM 13:121); TChr 3:45 (CCCM 12:213).
4. Thierry combines texts attributed to Hermes and Dionysius in his Lectiones
and his Glosa on Boethiuss De trinitate. See Nikolaus M. Haring, Commentaries
on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and His School (Toronto: Pontical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1971), 19596 and 28687; see also other references to Mer-
curius (97, 18990, 243, 270, 275, 566) and Dionysius (246, 309, 445, 5013).
5. Anselm of Laon, Letter to H., abbot of St.-Laurent, Lie`ge (Odon Lottin,
Psychologie et Morale au XIIe et XIIIe sie`cles [Gembloux: Duculot, 1959], 176).
6. Augustine, De doctrina Christiana 1.40 (CCSL 32:29; CSEL 80:30).
7. Augustine, In Epist. Ioann. ad Parthos, tract. V.8 (PL 35:2033): Dilige et
quod uis fac. Abelards version Habe caritatem, et fac quicquid uis, quoted by
Ivo of Chartres as from Augustines De disciplina ecclesiastica, Decretum, Prol. (PL
162:48B), and by Abelard both in the Prologue to SN (Boyer and McKeon, 98)
and SN 138.16, as well as in Comm. Rom. 4 (CCCM 12:293) and Scito teipsum
(Luscombe, 38; Ilgner, CCCM 190:25), referring to the pseudo-Augustinian ser-
mon 107.4 (PL 39:1958). Ivos version of the text is also quoted by Peter the
Venerable, Letters 20 and 111, in The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles
Constable (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 1:98 and 281. See Giles
Constable, Love and Do What You Will: The Medieval History of an Augustinian
Precept, Morton W. Bloomeld Lectures 4 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute,
1999).
8. On the meaning of the term, see Sabina Flanagan, Lexicographic and
Syntactic Explorations of Doubt in Twelfth-Century Latin Texts, Journal of Me-
dieval History 27 (2001): 21940.
9. Dial. 2.1 (de Rijk, 153.1112).
10. Boyer and McKeon list the contents of the recension in SN Z (Zurich,
Zentralbibl. Car. C 162), 7: SN 1, 56, 89, 1119, 2324, 7, 66. Much of the
material under question 66 (about Christ) was subsequently distributed under
other headings. On the Sententie Magistri A., the authorship of which is debated,
see chap. 2, n. 73.
11. See SN 9.3, 43.9, 145.5 from the De differentiis topicis; SN 9.3ab, 138.21a
b from the In Categorias Aristotelis and 144.4 from the De divisione.
12. The contents of this recension, known as CT after the two manuscripts
in which it is contained (Tours, Bibl. Mun. 85 and Monte Cassino, MS 174.0),
are listed by Boyer and McKeon, pp. 579612: SN 124 (God), 66, 64, 79, 75,
67, 42, 70, 71, [35, 36], 69, 68, 63, 72, [48], 78, 84 (Christ); 106, [158], 108, 107,
10913, 11635 (sacraments); [56], 139, 13637, 140, 138, 14144, 149, 14547,
[31], 148, 151, 153, 155, 154, 157 (charity and sin).
13. See, for example, SN 124.17, drawn from Decretum 8.6066, 15355.
Only SN 130.14 is taken from Decretum 17.6.
14. SN 137.8; cf. Collationes 2.98 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 116) and SN
137.1119, discussed in Collationes 2.99100 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 11620).
15. SN 138.20, De inventione 2.53.161, discussed in Collationes 2:132 (Mar-
enbon and Orlandi, 144).
16. TChr 3.75, 178, 181, 4.131 (CCCM 12:225, 26263, 331); cf. TSum
2.110, 112 (CCCM 13:15354).
17. TChr 1.2526 (CCCM 12:8182); also tsch 48 (CCCM 12:419), TSch
1.41 (CCCM 13:334), Comm. Rom. 1 (CCCM 12:69).
18. TChr 1.2728 (CCCM 12:8284).
19. TChr 1.34 (CCCM 12:86).
20. TChr 1.36 (CCCM 12:87), quoting from SN 24.1, repeated in tsch 73
(CCCM 12:43031) and TSch 1.66 (CCCM 13:344).
21. TChr 1.72 (CCCM 12:101).
22. TChr 1.8082 (CCCM 12:1056).
23. TChr 1.13033 (CCCM 12:12829); cf. Liber ad Alexandrum (PL Supp. 1:
68485); and Jerome, letter 70.4 (CSEL 54:705), Contra Iovinianum 14 (PL 23:
304A).
24. See Richard Stoneman, Legends of Alexander the Great (London: Dent,
1994).
25. TChr 2.1321 (CCCM 12:13841).
26. William of Champeaux, Sententie, in Psychologie et Morale au XIIe et XIIIe
sie`cles, vol. 5, ed. Odon Lottin (Gembloux: Duculot, 1959), nos. 25861, pp. 208
12.
27. TChr 2.21 (CCCM 12:141); Ovid, Amores 3.4.17.
28. TChr 2.28 (CCCM 12:14344).
29. TChr 2.44 (CCCM 12:14950).
30. TChr 2.45 (CCCM 12:150).
31. TChr 2.57 (CCCM 12:155).
32. TChr 2.89 (CCCM 12:171).
33. TChr 2.1048 (CCCM 12:17880).
34. TChr 2.129 (CCCM 12:19293).
35. TChr 3.10 (CCCM 12:199)
36. TChr 3.52 (CCCM 12:216).
37. TChr 3.11011 (CCCM 12:235).
38. TChr 3.162 (CCCM 12:255); cf. TSum 2:102 (CCCM 13:150).
39. TChr 3.167 (CCCM 12:257).
40. TChr 4.77 (CCCM 12:301).
41. TChr 4.7276 (CCCM 12:297300).
42. Bernard, letter 13 (SBO 7:62).
43. TChr 4.7780 (CCCM 12:3012).
44. TChr 4.155, 158 (CCCM 12:34344); see also TChr 3:153, 4:46, 48
(CCCM 12:252, 286).
45. TChr 3.82, 4.92 (CCCM 12:228, 309).
46. De int. (Morin).
47. De int. 2426 (Morin, 42).
48. TChr 4.9697 (CCCM 12:31213).
49. TChr 4.152 (CCCM 12:341).
50. William, Sententie, nos. 23740, pp. 19598.
51. TChr 5.51 (CCCM 12:369); R. Wielockx points out a similar shift away
from Augustinian theory in the De caritate, a treatise he attributes to Walter
of Mortagne. See Wielockx, La sentence De caritate et la discussion scolastique
sur lamour, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 58 (1982): 5086, 33456; 59
(1983):2645, esp. 335 (see chap. 10, n.10, below).
52. TChr 5.51 (CCCM 12:369).
54. Hugh of St.-Victor, Didascalicon 3.2 (ed. C. H. Buttimer, Didascalicon de
studio legendi, Fontes Christiani 27 [Freiburg: Herder, 1977], 220); cf. Isidore,
Etymologiae 2.24.5; and Augustine, De civitate Dei 8.3.
57. LLL, 105, 15354, with further notes on 355 nn. 33 and 34.
58. John of Salisbury describes the hostility of Cornicius to these famous
teachers in Metalogicon 1.5 (CCCM 98:21). Lambert Marie de Rijk relates Johns
comment that Cornicius claimed the authority of Seneca for his logic (1.22;
CCCM 98:49) to the inspiration of these gualdicae, warned against by Wibald of
Stavelot in 1149 (PL 189:1255B). See de Rijk, Some New Evidence on Twelfth-
Century Logic: Alberic and the School of Mont Ste Genevie`ve (Montani), Vi-
varium 4 (1966): 157, esp. 48.
59. See the letters of Stephen of Senlis and the archbishop of Sens (PL 173:
1263B1264C).
60. See L. J. Engels, Adtendite a falsis prophetis (ms. Colmar, H. 152v
153v): Un texte de Pierre Abelard contre les Cisterciens retrouve? (no. 35), in
Corona gratiarum: Miscellanea patristica, historica et liturgica, Eligio Dekkers O.S.B.,
Instrumenta Patristica 11 (Bruges: Sint-Pietersabdij, 1975), 2:195228.
8. Heloise and the Paraclete

1. See Thomas G. Waldman, Abbot Suger and the Nuns of Argenteuil,
Traditio 41 (1985): 23972.
3. Suger, Vita Ludovici 27, ed. Henri Waquet, Vie de Louis VI le Gros (Paris:
Belles Lettres, 1964), 216; Suger, Testamentum, in Oeuvres, ed. Francoise Gasparri,
vol. 2 (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2001], 205.
4. Ed. Leopold Delisle, Rouleaux des morts du IXe au XVe sie`cle (Paris: Impri-
merie nationale, 1866), 299, and again in Rouleau mortuaire du B. Vital, abbe de
Savigny (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1909), 2224; LLL, 16263.
5. David Wulstan presents his arguments for Heloises authorship of these plays
and analyzes their relationship to the Limoges sponsus drama in his essay, Heloise
at Argenteuil and the Paraclete, in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and
Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval
Music, 2003), 6790. These plays were edited and translated by Peter Dronke,
Nine Medieval Latin Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 87
100.
6. LLL, 16466, 359 n. 76; trans. Bond, The Loving Subject, 16669.
7. For further details, see Constant J. Mews, Liturgy and Identity at the Par-
aclete: Heloise, Abelard, and the Evolution of Cistercian Reform and Heloise,
the Paraclete Liturgy and Mary Magdalen, in Stewart and Wulstan, eds., Poetic
and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, 1933, 100112.
8. Abelard, Ep. III (Hicks, 45).
9. La Chronique de Morigny (10951152), ed. Leon Mirot (Paris: Alphonse
Picard, 1912), 54.
10. Epistola cujusdam doctoris ad amicum suum, ed. Edmund Marte`ne and Ursin
Durand, vol. 1 of Veterum Scriptorum et Monumentorum . . . Amplissima collectio
(1724; reprint, New York: B. Franklin, 1968), 78793.
11. This is examined by Carol Dana Lanham, Salutatio Formulas in Latin Letters
to 1200: Syntax, Style, and Theory, Munchener Beitrage zur Mediavistik und
Renaissance-Forschung 22 (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1975).
12. Heloise, Ep. II (Hicks, 46); cf. Abelards report of her speech, HC (Mon-
frin, 77), quoting Seneca, letter 77.3: Non cum vaccaveris philosophandum est.
14. Heloise, Ep. II (Hicks, 50), quoting Cicero, De inventione 1.31.52.
15. Abelard, Ep. III (Hicks, 60).
16. Heloise, Ep. IV (Hicks, 62), quoting Seneca, letter 24.1.
17. Heloise, Ep. IV (Hicks, 69).
18. Heloise, Ep. IV (Hicks, 69), quoting Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 16 (PL
23:367).
19. Collationes 1.8 and 13 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 10 and 16).
20. Abelard, Ep. IV (Hicks, 70).
21. Abelard, Ep. IV (Hicks, 84).
22. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:124)
23. Collationes 59, 19495 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 74, 198200).
24. Because Suo in this greeting was misprinted in the 1616 edition as Domino,
Betty Radice supplies a nonsensical translation of the phrase, The Letters of Abelard
and Heloise, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), 159. Abelard describes Heloise as
singularis in Letters 2, 4, 54, 56, while she uses specialis about him or her love in
Letters 21, 25, 76, 79; see chap. 4, n. 18.
25. Ep. VI (Hicks, 88), quoting Tusculanae disputationes, IV.35.75. Although
a relatively uncommon text in the twelfth century, it is quoted within the Flori-
legium anglicanum, a rich anthology of rare classical texts probably compiled in
Orleans by the mid-twelfth century. See Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse,
Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 72, 77, 10152, esp. 134.
26. Letter 24 (LLL, 209); TChr 1.16 (CCCM 12:78).
27. Ep. VI (Hicks, 93); Chrysostom, In Hebraeos, sermon 7, quoted by Abelard
in SN 134.2.
28. Ep. VI (Hicks, 94), quoting Augustine, De continentia viduali, also in SN
122.16.
29. Ep. VI (Hicks, 95).
30. Ep. VI (Hicks, 1012), quoting from Augustine, De bono conjugali, also in
SN 130.69, repeated briey in SN 143.16.
31. Ep. VII (Hicks, 10811).
32. See n. 5 above, and Mews, Heloise, the Paraclete Liturgy, and Mary Mag-
dalen, 10012.
33. Ep. VII (Hicks, 13031).
34. Ep. VIII (McLaughlin, 24243), quoting De inventione II.1.
35. Ep. VIII (McLaughlin, 245).
38. Ep. VIII (McLaughlin, 259); on the complexity of this relationshiop, see
Fiona J. Grifths, Mens Duty to Provide for Womens Needs: Abelard, Heloise,
and Their Negotiation of the cura monialium, Journal of Medieval History 30
(2004): 124.
39. Ep. VIII (McLaughlin, 27073), quoting with small changes from Heloises
Ep. VI (Hicks, 9798 and 95).
40. Ep. VIII (McLaughlin, 273), alluding back to Heloise, Ep. IV (Hicks, 66).
41. Ep. VIII (McLaughlin, 249, 28283).
42. Ep. VIII (McLaughlin, 289). Abelard quotes Jeromes Ep. 125.11 (CCSL
56:130) more accurately in Ep. IX (Smits, 219), as does Heloise in her Problemata
(PL 178:678C).
43. Ep. IX (Smits, 231, 235).
44. Ep. X (Smits, 239).
45. See David Wulstans note added to my essay Liturgy and Identity at the
Paraclete, 26 n. 46.
46. The commentary on the Lords Prayer printed as the work of Abelard in
PL 178 is not authentic; see The Expositio Orationis Dominicae Multorum le-
gimus orationes, ed. Charles S. F. Burnett, Revue benedictine 95 (1985): 6072.
By contrast, the Expositio Symboli Apostolorum and Expositio Symboli S. Athanasii
(PL 178:61732) are authentic; see too Sermo 14 (di Santis, 20718).
47. Institutiones nostre (PL 178:313C317B). See the critical edition and de-
tailed commentary of this text by Chrysogonus Waddell, The Paraclete Statutes:
Institutiones Nostrae: Introduction, Edition, Commentary, Cistercian Liturgy Series
20 (Gethsemani Abbey, Trappist, Ky.: Cistercian Publications, 1987), and my own
study, with translation, Heloise, the Paraclete Liturgy, and Mary Magdalen, 100
112.
48. Institutiones nostre, PL 178:313C.
49. Abelards hymnal and prefatory prologues have been edited by J. Szoverffy,
Peter Abelards Hymnarius Paraclitensis, 2 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Classical Folia Edi-
tions, 1975), and with much more awareness of their debt to Cistercian liturgical
traditions by Chrysogonus Waddell, Hymn Collections from the Paraclete, Cistercian
Liturgy Series 89 (Gethsemani Abbey, Trappist, Ky.: Cistercian Publications,
1989). I have translated the prologues in an appendix to Liturgy and Identity at
the Paraclete, 3033.
50. On the identity of all the hymns cited by Heloise with hymns sung at
Montier-la-Celle, see Mews, Liturgy and Identity at the Paraclete, 29 and 31 n.
73.
51. On the Cistercian reform of the Molesme liturgy under Stephen Harding,
and then subsequent moves to broaden Cistercian musical repertoire, see the fun-
damental studies of Chrysogonus Waddell, The Twelfth-Century Cistercian Hymnal
I and II, Cistercian Liturgy Series 12 (Gethsemani Abbey, Trappist, Ky.: Cister-
cian Publications, 1984), and Saint Bernard and the Cistercian Ofce at the
Abbey of the Paraclete, in The Chimaera of His Age: Studies on Bernard of Clair-
vaux, ed. E. Rozanne Elder and John R Sommerfeldt, Cistercian Studies Series 63
(Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980), 76121.
52. Sermo 1 (PL 178:383D).
53. Sermo 2 (PL 178:393D; di Santis, 182).
54. Sermo 3 (PL 178:399D).
55. Sermo 3 (PL 178:404D, 406A).
56. Sermo 4 (PL 178:413B414D; di Santis, 19899). Abelard frequently

quotes from this work, as in SN 15.28, 15.29, 31.30ab, 77.1, 78.10, 83.11, 128.3,
141.7, 142.7, 143.27. See J. van Banning, Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum (CCSL
87B:clxxxivclxxxviii).
57. Sermo 5 (PL 178:417D418B).
58. Sermo 7 (PL 178:433CD).
59. Sermo 8 (PL 178:441A442D).
60. Sermo 8 (PL 178:439D).
61. Sermo 11 (PL 178:453C).
62. Sermo 16 (PL 178:499B).
63. Sermo 12 (PL 178:479D).
64. Chrysogonus Waddell attributed this sequence to Abelard. See Waddell,
Epithalamica: An Easter Sequence by Peter Abelard, Musical Quarterly 72
(1986): 23971; see also n. 5.
65. Waddell, Epithalamica, 25051.
66. Letter 84 (LLL, 262, with discussion on 17172).
67. On these Planctus, see the important chapter in Peter Dronke, Poetic In-
dividuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 11449; see also
Dronkes essays on the theme of lament in medieval literature in Intellectuals and
Poets in Medieval Europe (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1992), 345489.
68. I am indebted to Juanita Feros Ruys for allowing me to draw on a series
of her studies on the Planctus, notably Planctus magis quam cantici: The Generic
Signicance of Abelards planctus, Plainsong and Medieval Music 11 (2002):37
44. She raises fascinating issues of gender reversal in Questions of Gender in the
Late Poetic Works of Abelard (Carmen ad Astralabium and Planctus), delivered
at the ANZAMEMS conference in Melbourne (February 2003). Both are being
reworked for an important publication authored by Ruys and John O. Ward, The
Repentant Abelard: Abelards Thought as Revealed in His Carmen ad Astralabium and
Planctus, forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan. This volume includes both a new
edition and translation, with extended commentary, of these two poetic works of
Abelard. An edition and Italian translation of the Planctus has also been brought
out by Massimo Sannelli, Pietro Abelardo: Planctus (Trento: La Finestra, 2002).
69. On the signicance of this planctus in relation to Heloises loss of contact
with her son, see Juanita Feros Ruys, Quae maternae immemor naturae: The Rhe-
torical Struggle over the Meaning of Motherhood in the Writings of Heloise and
Abelard, in Listening to Heloise, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: St. Martins
Press, 2000), 32339.
70. Ep. II (Hicks, 65). As elsewhere, I am indebted to the reections of Ruys
on the Planctus.
71. The point is made by Annelies Wouters, Abner delissime: Abelards
Version of a Biblical Lament, in Stewart and Wulstan, eds., Poetic and Musical
Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, 6067.
72. On these allusions, see LLL, 138.
73. Ep. IX (Smits, 231, 235).
74. Edited by E. Ernst, Ein unbeachtes Carmen guratum des Petrus Abae-
lardus, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 21 (1986),12546.
75. See chap. 1, n. 16.
9. Ethics, Sin, and Redemption

1. TChr 2.26, 31 (CCCM 12:143, 145).
2. C.S.F. Burnett, Peter Abelard, Soliloquium: A Critical Edition, Studi Me-
dievali, 3rd ser., 25 (1984): 85794.
3. Collationes 103 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 123).
4. Collationes 219 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 216). Platos account of Socrates
teaching that all things should be held in common is reported, but its source is
not identied in Collationes 119 (p. 134); cf. TChr 2.48 (CCCM 12:151).
6. Collationes (Marenbon and Orlandi, 222).
7. Marenbon, introduction to Collationes, xxxii. I have moved away from the
mid-1120s date that I suggested in On Dating the Works of Peter Abelard, 126,
although I would not follow the much later date, suggested by Julie A. Allen,
On the Dating of Abelards Dialogus: A Reply to Mews, Vivarium 36 (1998):
13551.
10. Collationes 76 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 96), quoting TChr 2.117 (CCCM
12:18485) TSch 2.19 (CCCM 13:414) and letter 13 (Smits, 272). Collationes
222 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 218) reproduces the same series of quotations as in
TChr 1.2 (CCCM 12:73).
11. Exp. Hex. (PL 178:768B).
12. Collationes 16 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 20); cf. TSum 1.2429 (CCCM
13:9596), TChr 1.4653 (CCCM 12:9093).
14. TChr 2.21 (CCCM 12:141), quoting Amores 3.4.7.
20. Collationes 76 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 96), quoting TChr 2.117 (CCCM
12:18485).
22. TChr 3.5, 2.60, 2.101 (CCCM 12:196, 156, 177).
24. Abelard adds a quotation from a ctional exchange between Paul and
Seneca in TChr 1.133a, in the version CT (CCCM 12:129), supplying additional
praise of Seneca as an authority in moral teaching in TSch 1.198 (CCCM 12:
40341). Abelard quotes from Seneca to Lucilius, letter 5.4, in his Rule, Ep. VIII
(McLaughlin, 27778).
25. Heloise, Ep. II, IV (Hicks, 46, 62), quoting from Seneca, Letters to Lucilius
40.1, 24.1, 5.4. She alludes to Senecas understanding of indifferentia in Ep. VI
(Hicks, 98); cf. Seneca, Letters 82.13 and 117.9.
26. Collationes 98104 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 11624) discuss texts of Cic-
ero, Augustine, and Paul quoted in SN 137.12, 78, 1119; 140.1, 3, 5; 141.7a;
142.3.
27. Collationes 99 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 118), quoted in SN 140.5.
29. Collationes 111 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 128), with identication of
sources at n. 98. As Marenbon observes, habitus is a more enduring condition than
dispositio in Aristotelian vocabulary, as transmitted by Boethius. Abelard reports
(in SN 144.3) Boethius saying that Aristotle differed from Socrates (Boethius, In
Cat. [PL 64:241A242D]). See the fundamental study of Cary J. Nederman, Na-
ture, Ethics, and the Doctrine of Habitus: Aristotelian Moral Psychology in the
Twelfth Century, Traditio 45 (19891990):87110.
30. Collationes 112 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 12830); cf. Heloise, Ep. IV
(Hicks, 69), alluding to 2 Tim. 2:5, with a response from Abelard, Ep. V (Hicks,
86).
31. Collationes 11517 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 13032), with valuable com-
ment by Marenbon, lxxvilxxix.
32. Collationes 122 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 136)
33. Collationes 59 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 74): culpam peruerse uoluntatis;
see also Collationes 102, 138, 222 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 122, 148, 218).
36. Collationes 141 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 150); cf. 92 (p. 112); see good
comments by Marenbon, lxixlxx.
38. Collationes 195 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 201), with Marenbons comment
on p. 200 n. 244; see also Collationes 59 (p. 74), and Comm. Rom. 2 (Rom. 4:7;
CCCM 11:124).
39. Hugh of St.-Victor, De sacramentis 2.16.5 (PL 176:590C593C), quoting
and paraphrasing Augustine, De civitate Dei 21.1314, 16 (CCSL 48:77882).
40. Bernard, Sermones in Cantica 66.10 (SBO 1:185).
43. Collationes 184, 188 (Marenbon and Orlandi, 192, 196).
47. Buytaerts text wrongly supplies mouere (to move) rather than monere (to
warn). On the rhetorical basis of Abelards theology, see Peter von Moos, Literary
Aesthetics in the Latin Middle Ages: The Rhetorical Theology of Peter Abelard,
in Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 11001540: Essays in Honour of John O.
Ward, ed. Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman, and Rodney M. Thomson (Turn-
hout: Brepols, 2003), 8198.
48. Comm. Rom. 1 (CCCM 11:42).
49. Comm. Rom. 1 (CCCM 11:78).
50. Comm. Rom. 1 (CCCM 11:81).
51. Comm. Rom. 1 (CCCM 11:7576).
52. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:11318).
53. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:114); cf. Augustine, De Trinitate 4.13 (CCSL
50:18384).
54. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:117).
55. TChr 1.129 (CCCM 12:128), repeated in TSch 1.192 (CCCM 13:401).
56. Comm. Rom. 2, 3 (CCCM 11:118, 215).
57. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:119).
58. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:122, 12932, 159, 16775).
59. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:13643).
60. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:126).
61. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:16163).
62. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:16364, 16667).
63. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:174).
64. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:17173).
65. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:179).
66. Comm. Rom. 2 (CCCM 11:173).
67. Comm. Rom. 3 (CCCM 11:2023).
68. Comm. Rom. 3 (CCCM 11:2067).
69. Comm. Rom. 3 (CCCM 11:227).
70. Comm. Rom. 4 (CCCM 11:235).
71. Comm. Rom. 4 (CCCM 11:239).
72. Comm. Rom. 4 (CCCM 11:239).
73. Comm. Rom. 4 (CCCM 11:29093).
74. Comm. Rom. 4 (CCCM 11:307). Compare Commentarius Cantabrigiensis,
ed. A. M. Landgraf (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1937),
2:351, and on Heloise, 2:454.
75. Comm. Rom. 4 (CCCM 11:310).
76. Exp. Hex. (PL 178:731A732C).
77. Thierry of Chartres, De sex dierum operibus, in Commentaries on Boethius
by Thierry of Chartres, ed. Nikolaus M. Haring (Toronto: Pontical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1971), 55575.
78. Exp. Hex. (PL 178:735D736A).
79. Exp. Hex. (PL 178:734BC).
80. Exp. Hex. (PL 178:742D, 746C).
81. Exp. Hex. (PL 178:754AB).
82. Exp. Hex. (PL 178:761C, 763D).
83. Exp. Hex. (Buytaert, 179). Buytaert prints a long nal section missing from
the printed text in PL 178.
84. Exp. Hex. (PL 178:768B).

85. Exp. Hex. (PL 178:782B783A).
86. Exp. Hex. (Buytaert, 17778).
89. Exp. Hex. (Buytaert, 176); cf. SN 53: that the sin of Adam is great, and
the contrary.
91. Problemata 1, 2 (PL 178:679A, 679C).
92. Problemata 3 (PL 178:679B).
93. Problemata 8 (PL 178:689D).
94. Problemata 42 (PL 178:723A); cf. Exp. in Hex. (PL 178:764BC) and SN
130.
95. Carmen, ll. 1116 (Rubingh-Bosscher, 107). The Carmen has been trans-
lated into Italian and given full commentary by Graziella Ballanti as P. Abelardo,
Insegnamenti al Figlio (Rome: Armando Armando, 1984). I am indebted to John
O. Ward and Juanita Feros Ruys for permission to quote here from their translation
of the Carmen, based on a revised edition of the text, forthcoming in The Repen-
tant Abelard (Palgrave Macmillan).
96. Carmen, ll. 37984 (Rubingh-Bosscher, 127). This passage is also trans-
lated and commented on by Peter Dronke, Abelard and Heloise in Medieval
Testimonies (originally published in 1976), reprinted in Dronke, Intellectuals and
Poets in Medieval Europe (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1992), 25758.
97. Carmen, ll. 74142 (Rubingh-Bosscher, 147).
10. Faith, Sacraments, and Charity

1. Abelards successor at St.-Gildas was appointed in 1142 (Chronicon Ruyensis
Coenobii, in Bouquet, Recueil 12:564A).
2. The most widely diffused are the Sententiae Petri Abaelardi (in Sent. P.A.).
For discussion of these and other sentences collections, see Constant J. Mews,
The Sententie of Peter Abelard, RTAM 63 (1986): 13084; and Mews, Orality,
Literacy, and Authority in the Twelfth-Century Schools, Exemplaria 2 (1990):
475500 (both reprinted in Abelard and His Legacy).
3. Hugh of St.-Victor, Sententie de divinitate, pref., ed. A. M. Piazzoni, Studi
Medievali, 3rd ser., 23 (1982): 91255: quia tria necessaria sunt ad salutem, scil-
icet des, opera, sacramenta.
4. Hugh of St.-Victor, De sacramentis, (PL 176:173618) On the Sacraments of
the Christian Faith (De sacramentis), trans. Roy Deferrari (Cambridge, Mass.: Me-
dieval Academy of America, 1951).
5. Hugh, De sacramentis, Prol. 2 (PL 176:183C); On the Sacraments, trans.
Deferrari, p. 4.
6. Abelards heavily annotated copy of the Theologia Christiana is preserved
through two independent copies (Monte Cassino, Bibl. Della Badia 174; and
Tours, Bibl. Mun. 85); see my comments in CCCM 13:21021.
7. tsch 1 (CCCM 12:401); TSch 1.1 (CCCM 13:312).
8. Hugh, Sententie de divinitate (Piazzoni, 927).

9. Summa sententiarum 4.8 (PL 176:125AB). On Otto of Lucca as author of
the Summa sententiarum, see chap. 11, n. 13. This nal chapter (4.8) could have
been added to the original treatise by Walter of Mortagne, who also composed
the nal section of the treatise, on marriage.
10. Robert Wielockx argues that this De caritate is by Walter of Mortagne
because he employs very similar discussions in his letters and that they are closely
linked to ideas espoused by Peter Abelard in the 1130s. See Wielockx, La sen-
tence De caritate et la discussion scolastique sur lamour, Ephemerides Theologicae
Lovanienses 58 (1982): 5086, 33456; 59 (1983):2645. It had previously been
edited as sententie attributed to Anselm of Laon by Odon Lottin, Psychologie et
morale aux XIIe et XIII sie`cles, vol. 5 (Gembloux: Duculot, 1959), nos. 7175,
pp. 6166.
11. Hugh, De sacramentis 1.10.2 (PL 176:330D).
12. tsch 51 (CCCM 12:42021); TSch 1.44 (CCCM 13:33536).
13. tsch 5758 (CCCM 12:42244); see Walter of Mortagne, Epistola ad Abae-
lardum, ed. H. Ostlender, Florilegium Patristicum 19 (Bonn, 1927), 3440.
14. TSch 1.9 (CCCM 13:33334).
15. Exp. Hex. (PL 178:761AB); Hugh, De sacramentis 1.7.10 (PL 176:290D).
16. TSch 1.6467 (CCCM 13:34345).
17. TSch 1.99, 102 (CCCM 13:357, 358).
18. TSch 1.110 (CCCM 13:361).
19. TSch 2.3237 (CCCM 13:42325).
20. TSch 2.50 (CCCM 13:433).
21. TSch 2.6367 (CCCM 13:43941).
22. TSch 2.6880 (CCCM 13:44147).
23. TSch 2.8991 (CCCM 13:45152).
24. TSch 2.11216 (CCCM 13:46364).
25. TSch 2.123a127a (CCCM 13:46971).
26. Anselm of Havelberg, Antikeimenon 2 (PL 188:1174BD, 1202D1207D),
quoting TSch 1.122 and excerpts from 2.15765 (CCCM 13:367, 48388). A
fteenth-century copy of TSch from Magdeburg may derive from a manuscript
used by Anselm of Havelberg; see my comments in CCCM 13:26768.
27. Hugh, De sacramentis 1.2.22 (PL 176:214A216D).
28. TChr 5.41, expanded in the version CT of TChr 5.35a35f (CCCM 12:
36263, 366), transferred into TSch 3:3036 (CCCM 13:51215).
29. TSch 3.47 (CCCM 13:520).
30. TSch 3.4953 (CCCM 13:52023).
31. TSch 3.6567 (CCCM 13:528).
32. TSch 3.7071 (CCCM 13:52930).
33. TSch 3.85, 95 (CCCM 13:53536, 539).
34. TSch 3.20 (CCCM 13:549).
35. Sent. Parisienses (Landgraf, 29).
36. See Mews, Sententie of Peter Abelard, 13084 (reprinted in Abelard and
His Legacy).
37. Sent. P.A. 24 (Buzzetti, 109).

39. Sent. P.A. 26 (Buzzetti, 115); cf. Comm. Rom. 4 (CCCM 11:239).
40. Sent. P.A. 28 (Buzzetti, 121); cf. Hugh, De sacramentis 2.6.2 (PL 176:
425AB).
43. Hugh, De sacramentis 2.13.11 (PL 176:539B).
44. Ibid. 2.13.12 (PL 176:546BC).
45. Sent. P.A. 3334 (Buzzetti, 15053).
47. Scito teipsum (Luscombe, 68; CCCM 190:5).
51. Hugh, De sacramentis 2.11.9 (PL 176:405CD).
52. Sicto teipsum (Luscombe, 38; CCCM 190:25).
55. In Comm. Rom. 4 (CCCM 11:307) as in the original text of Scito teipsum
(CCCM 190:37), Abelard cites Luke 23:24 in a pre-Vulgate form (ignosce his)
rather than the Vulgate dimitte illis, as corrected in the manuscript followed by
Luscombe, 56.
58. Scito teipsum (Luscombe, 80; CCCM 190:53); SN 53.5; Comm. Rom. 2
(CCCM 11:160, 170).
60. Hugh, De sacramentis 2.14.3 (PL 176:555C556C); see also long excerpts
from Augustine in 2.16.5 (590C593C).
61. Scito teipsum (Luscombe, 88; CCCM 190:59); cf. Bernard, Sermones in
Cantica 65.10 (SBO 1:185). See p. 179 for earlier comments by Abelard.
11. Accusations of Heresy

1. Suger writes of his involvement in these events in his Life of Louis VI,
written around 11431144, Vita Ludovici 3234, ed. Henri Waquet (Paris: Belles
Lettres, 1907).
2. Mary Stroll, The Jewish Pope: Ideology and Politics in the Papal Schism of 1130
(Leiden: Brill, 1987). On Jordan, brother of Anacletus II, see Otto of Freising,
Chronica 7.31, ed. A. Hofmeister, MGH Scripta rerum germanicarum in usu scho-
larum (Hannover: Hahnische Buchhandlung, 1984), 35860.
3. Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. J. Alberigo et al. (Bologna: Istituto

per le scienze religiose, 1973), 203.
4. Richard of Poitiers, Chronicon (MGH Scriptores 26:81).
5. John, Metalogicon 2.10 (CCCM 93:7071). The standard assumption is that
John is referring to a temporary departure of Abelard from Paris in 11371139
(perhaps to spend time at the Paraclete), rather than his permanent departure in
1141; see K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, The Chronology of John of Salisburys Studies
in France: A Reading of Metalogicon 2.10, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser., 28 (1987):
193203.
6. Lambert Marie de Rijk, Some New Evidence on Twelfth-Century Logic:
Alberic and the School of Mont Ste Genevie`ve (Montani), Vivarium 4 (1966):
157.
7. Gilbert of Poitiers, The Commentaries on Boethius by Gilbert of Poitiers, ed.
N. M. Haring (Toronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1966). On Gil-
berts commentary on the Psalms, see Theresa Gross-Diaz, The Psalms Commentary
of Gilbert of Poitiers: From Lectio Divina to the Lecture Room (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
8. There has been much debate about where Thierry and Gilbert taught. Clar-
embald of Arras reports that he studied under both Thierry and Hugh of St. Victor
(d. 1141), implying that they were both active in Paris (The Boethian Commentaries
of Clarembald of Arras, trans. and ed. David B. George and John R. Fortin [Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002], xixiv). Nikolaus Haring
cites evidence that Gilbert studied at Chartres and Laon before 1117 but then
came back to Chartres, where he was a canon, succeeding Bernard of Chartres as
its chancellor in 1126, a position he had resigned by 1137. See Haring, Paris
and Chartres Revisited, in Essays in Honour of Anton Charles Pegis, ed. J. R.
ODonnell (Toronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 27374.
Everard of Ypres recalls that whereas Gilbert of Poitiers had only a handful of
students in Chartres, he lectured to hundreds in Paris. See Haring, The Cistercian
Everard of Ypres and His Appraisal of the Conict between St. Bernard and
Gilbert of Poitiers, MS 17 (1955): 14372.
9. See Thierry of Chartres, Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and
His School, ed. N. M. Haring (Toronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1971).
10. Otto, Gesta Friderici 1.49 and 52 (Waitz and von Simson, 69 and 74).
11. Gilbert, Commentaries on Boethius, 61. It is not certain whether Abelard
included Gilbert in the criticisms he makes of teaching that properties are things
separate from God in TChr 3.16669 and 4.77 (CCCM 12:25658, 301) and
TSch 2.66 (CCCM 13:440), passages directed against Ulger of Angers.
13. The debate over the authorship of the Summa sententiarum, long contested,
is settled by Ferruccio Gastaldelli, La Summa sententiarum di Ottone di Lucca.
Conclusione di un dibattito scolare, Salesianum 42 (1980): 53746.
14. David E. Luscombe rightly points out that some scholars in the past have
exaggerated the debt of the Summa sententiarum to Abelard. See Luscombe, The
School of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 198213.
15. Summa sententiarum 1.3 (PL 176:47A).
16. Ibid. 1.14 (PL 176:69C).

17. Ibid. 3.1016 (PL 176:105A114C).
18. See Bernard, letters 205 and 362 (SBO 8:64, 30910). Pullens Sententia-
rum libri octo (PL 186:6391010) are studied by F. Courtenay, Cardinal Robert
Pullen: An English Theologian of the Twelfth Century (Rome: Gregorian University,
1954).
19. Pullen, Sententiarum libri octo 1.916 (PL 186:709A718B).
20. Bernard, letter 410 (SBO 8:391). On this letter and Bernards esteem for
Otto of Lucca, see the notes of Ferruccio Gastaldelli to his translation of Bernards
letters, Opere di San Bernardo 6.2, Lettere, (Milan: Scriptorium Claravallense,
1984), 55457, and his discussion of letter 551, in Le tre ultime lettere
dellepistolario di San Bernardo, in Studi su San Bernardo e Goffredi di Auxerre
(Florence: Galluzzo, 2001), 26279.
21. N. M. Haring, ed., The Eulogium ad Alexandrum Papam Tertiam of John
of Cornwall,MS 13 (1965): 265. See my comments in CCCM 13:26467.
22. Robert of Melun, Sententie, ed. R. Martin, Oeuvres III.1 (Louvain: Spici-
legium sacrum lovaniense, 1948), 45; Luscombe, School of Peter Abelard, 283.
23. On Roberts prologue and the contrast with Lombard, see Constant J.
Mews, Orality, Literacy, and Authority in the Twelfth-Century Schools, Exem-
plaria 2 (1990): 475500 (reprinted in Reason and Belief).
24. On Walters debate with Hugh about the wisdom of Christ, see Hughs
treatise De sapientia animae Christi, addressed to Walter (PL 176:845D856D).
Walter challenges Alberic on Christs fear of death in letter 4 (dAchery, Spici-
legium [Paris, 1722], 3:52324).
25. For Walters exchange with Alberic, see E. Marte`ne and U. Durand, Ve-
terum Scriptorum et Monumentorum (Paris, 1724), 1:83439.
26. Walter, Letters 2 and 5 (dAchery, 3:522, 52426).
27. Walter, letter 2 ad universos deles (dAchery, 3:52022).
28. Walter, letter 1 (dAchery, 3:520).
29. For a summary of Williams involvement in the reform movement, see
Paul Verdeyens introduction to his edition of the works of William of St.-Thierry,
CCCM 86 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), xvixxi.
30. Berengar of Poitiers, Apologia, in The Satirical Works of Berengar of Poi-
tiers. An Edition with an Introduction, ed. Rodney M. Thomson, MS 42 (1980):
89138, esp. 111, 12025.
31. See William of St.-Thierrys letter, printed as no. 326 among the letters
of Bernard (PL 182:531B), in Jean Leclercq, Les lettres de Guillaume de Saint-
Thierry a` Saint Bernard, Revue benedictine 79 (1969): 37591 (reprinted in Le-
clercq, Recueil detudes sur Saint Bernard et ses ecrits, vol. 4 [Rome: Edizioni di
Storia e Letteratura, 1987], 34970). His Disputatio is found in PL 180:24982.
32. John of Salisbury, Historia ponticalis 31, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall,
2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 63); Otto, Gesta Friderici 1.28 (Waitz
and von Simson, 133).
33. Chron. Maur. 3.4 (Mirot, 7778).
34. For further detail on these events, see Constant J. Mews, The Council of
Sens (1141): Abelard, Bernard, and the Fear of Social Upheaval, Speculum 77
(2002): 34282.
35. Bernards dependence on William of St.-Thierry in writing the treatise is
shown by Jean Leclercq, Les formes successives de la lettre-traite de Saint Bernard
contre Abelard, Revue benedictine 78 (1968): 87105 (reprinted in Leclercq, Re-
cueil detudes sur Saint Bernard, 4:26583.
36. The Capitula Haeresum XIV was edited in 1969 by Buytaert (CCCM 12:
47380) and again by Nikolaus Haring, Die vierzehn Capitula Heresum Petri
Abaelardi, Cteaux 31 (1980): 3652. I argue that its author is Thomas of Mo-
rigny in The Lists of Heresies Imputed to Peter Abelard, Revue benedictine 95
(1985): 77108, esp. 94102 (reprinted in Abelard and His Legacy).
37. Bernard, letter 190 (SBO 8:3940); see Mews, Lists of Heresies.
38. Jean Leclercq, Autour de la correspondance de S. Bernard, in Sapientiae
Doctrina: Melanges de theologie et de litterature medievales offerts a` Dom Hildebrand
Bascour O.S.B., ed. Roland Hissette (Louvain: Mont-Cesar, 1980), 18598, esp.
18690.
39. Ferruccio Gastaldelli, Le piu` antiche testimonianze biograche su San
Bernardo. Studio storico-critico sui Fragmentum Gaufridi, Analecta Cisterciensia
45 (1989): 380, esp. 21 (reprinted in Gastaldelli, Studi su San Bernardo e Goffredo
di Auxerre, 43127, esp. 62), quoting from Troyes, Bm, MS 503, fol. 13v: Cet-
erum mihi aliquando magistrum fuisse recordor. . . . Siquidem pretium redemp-
tionis evacuans, nil aliud nobis in sacricio dominice passionis commendabat, nisi
virtutis exemplum et incentivum amoris. Helinand of Froidmont, who recalls
that he was taught by a student of Abelard, Ralph the Grammarian, reports this
sermon of Geoffrey at length in his Chronicon (PL 212:1035AC).
40. Hugh, Sententie de divinitate (Piazzoni, 18889); and Bernard, letter 188
(SBO 8:1415).
42. Charles S. F. Burnett, Peter Abelard, Confessio dei Universis: A Critical
Edition of Abelards Reply to Accusations of Heresy, MS 48 (1986): 11138. See
the similar Confessio dei by Walter of Mortagne, letter 2, ad universos deles, in
Spicilegium, 2nd ed., ed. L. DAchery (Paris, 1723), 3:52022.
43. For an edition of the surviving fragments of the Liber sententiarum, see
Constant J. Mews, The Sententie of Peter Abelard, RTAM 53 (1986): 15984.
44. Apologia adversus Abaelardum, ed. E.-M. Buytaert (CCCM 11:35968).
The Disputatio (PL 180:283328) was convincingly attributed to Thomas by
M.-B. Carra de Vaux Saint-Cyr, Disputatio catholicorum patrum adversus dog-
mata Petri Abaelardi, Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques 47 (1963):
20520; and by Nikolaus M. Haring, Thomas von Morigny: Disputatio catholi-
corum patrum adversus dogmata Petri Abaelardi, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser., 22
(1981): 299376.
45. Otto, Gesta Friderici 1.51 (Waitz and von Simson, 74).
46. Bernard, letters 42 and 182 (SBO 7:10031; 8:2).
47. Letter 326.4 (Leclercq, Autour de la correspondance de S. Bernard, 190);
Berengar, Apologia, 11213.
48. John of Salisbury, Historia ponticalis 9, p. 19.

49. For further discussion of the Tournai affair, see Mews, Council of Sens
(1141), 37879.
53. Bernard, letter 194 (SBO 8:4648). No variant copy survives of the Edict
of the Emperors Valentinus and Marcianus to the Synod of Chalcedon, as ad-
dressed to Pope John. See Edictum Marciani ad Synodum Chalcedonensem, in
Concilium Universale Chalcedonense, ed. Eduard Schwartz, Acta conciliorum oecou-
menicorum 2/2 (Berlin, 1936), 20. Innocents edict is published as letter 447 (PL
179:515C517A), along with letter 448 (517BC), not included in Bernards cor-
respondence and printed from an unknown Vatican manuscript by Mabillon in
his 1687 edition of Bernards letters, but not reproduced by Migne in PL 182 or
by Leclercq in SBO. See Leclercq, Les lettres de Guillaume de Saint-Thierry,
379.
Giles Constable (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 1:259).
56. C.S.F. Burnett, Confessio dei ad HeloisamAbelards Last Letter to
Heloise? A Discussion and Critical Edition of the Latin and Medieval French
Versions, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 21 (1986): 14755.
57. TSch 2.115 (CCCM 13:46465).
58. TSch 2.13536 (CCCM 13:475)
59. TSch 2.13740 (CCCM 13:47677).
60. Franz J. Worstbrock, Ein Planctus auf Petrus Abaelard, Mittellateinisches
Jahrbuch 16 (1981): 16673.
61. Otto, Gesta Friderici 1.4851 (Waitz and von Simson, 6874).
62. Ibid. 1.54 (76).
63. Peter the Venerable, letter 115, in Constable, ed., Letters of Peter the Ven-
erable, 1:3067).
64. On these epitaphs, see Peter Dronke, Abelard and Heloise in Medieval Tes-
timonies, W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture 26 (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press,
1976), 50; and the appendix to Mews, La bibliothe`que du Paraclet du XIIIe sie`cle
a` la Revolution, Studia Monastica 27 (1985): 3167, esp. 6163 (reprinted in
Reason and Belief).
65. See the study of Mary McLaughlin, Heloise the Abbess: The Expansion
of the Paraclete, in Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman,
ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: St. Martins Press, 2000), 117; and her forth-
coming biography of Heloise.
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Index
Abelard. See Peter Abelard Anacletus II, Antipope, 227, 235

Absolom, 72 Angers, 147
accidents, 24, 33, 85, 87, 211 Anjou, 11, 2122, 143
Adam (Genesis), 114, 178, 19192, Anselm of Havelberg, 213, 283n
19798, 201, 2089 Anselm of Laon, 7, 3740, 103, 112
Adam, Abbot, 12426 13, 11617, 125, 127, 129, 143,
Adam of Balsham (Parvipontanus), 228 187, 18991, 228, 231
Adams, Henry, 16, 253n Anselm, St., 4, 18, 22, 25, 27, 56,
Adelard of Bath, 197 101102, 1089, 111, 11819, 189,
adultery, 192, 200 213, 217, 236, 238
Aelred of Rievaulx, 70 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas
Alan of Lille, 86 Argenteuil, Abbey of, 7, 79, 14548,
Alberic of Paris, 228 155
Alberic of Rheims, 11921, 13637, Aristotle, 12, 88, 182, 229; criticizes
143, 206, 21011, 228, 229 Plato, 45
Alexander the Great, 133 Aristotle, works of: Analytica priora,
ambiguity, 86 23, 44, 96, 228; Analytica Posteriora,
Amboise, Francois d, 1314 44, 228; Categories, 15, 2324, 28,
Ambrose, St., 52, 103, 107, 116, 161, 3335, 43, 55, 82, 128; De anima,
164, 168 90; De sophisticis elenchis, 23, 93, 96,
amica, 6162 228, 254n, 267n; Ethica, 64;
amicitia, 58, 118, 131, 174, 153 Metaphysica, 89; Periermeneias, 23
amor, 60, 62, 65, 6871, 7779, 152 24, 29, 3435, 4749, 55, 8283,
53, 17475, 189, 2067, 23233, 8996, 109, 136, 138; Physica, 89;
245, 264n Topica, 23, 26
299
300 index
argument, 52 Bezalel, 72, 172

arithmetic, 23 Bible. See Scripture
Arnold of Brescia, 23435, 24243, bishops, 224
248 Boethius, 25, 32, 35, 49, 78100, 246;
Arnulf of Laon, 26 De arithmetica, 22; De consolatione
ars dictaminis. See dictamen philosophiae, 22, 90, 94, 215; De
Asella, 115, 160 divisione, 55; De differentiis topicis,
Aspasia, 62, 153 23, 51, 96100; De trinitate, 86,
Astralabe, 79, 2023 108, 136; De musica, 133; De
astronomy, 197 syllogismo categorico, 23; De
Athanasian Creed, 110, 117, 122, syllogismo hypothetico, 23, 82; In
132, 208 categorias, 24; In Periermeneias, 24
Augustine, St., 29, 37, 52, 1057, 115 25; In Topica Ciceronis, 8283
16, 127, 134, 158, 18081, 188, Brahmins, 124, 133
19697, 200, 224; De bono coniugali, Brittany, 7, 21, 60
130, 158, 201; De civitate Dei, 106;
De doctrina Christiana, 22, 130, 180; Caesar. See Augustus
De trinitate, 67, 103, 11011, 116, Calixtus II, Pope, 120
122, 132; Enchiridion, 191; Homiliae caritas, 3839, 4142, 69, 127, 130
super Iohannem, 22; Rule, 31, 37 32, 140, 175, 181, 189, 199, 2067,
Augustus (Caesar), 4, 62, 69, 152 21920, 232, 245
authenticity debates, 4, 1617 Carmina burana, 75, 78, 86, 172,
264n, 266n
baptism, 183, 190, 193, 218 castration. See Peter Abelard
Basil, St., 103, 227 Catherine II de Courcelles. See
Baudri of Bourgueil, 23, 69, 73, 79, Courcelles
105, 147 Celestine II, Pope, 149, 235, 241
Beauvais, 2223, 40 Chalons-sur-Marne, 37, 40, 137, 142
Bec, 22. See Anselm, St. Chalcidius, 106, 183
Bede, 124 Champagne, 8, 143. See also
Benedict, Rule of, 14, 17, 125, 134, Theobald, Count of Blois and
15759, 163, 227 Champagne
Benton, John, 17 Chartres, 119, 137, 150, 270n. See
Berengar of Poitiers, 240, 245 also Geoffrey of Chartres
Berengar of Tours, 242 chastity, 160
Bernard of Chartres, 106, 117, 138, chimaera, 47
228 Christ, 1011, 39, 109, 11113, 115
Bernard of Clairvaux, St., 3, 5, 6, 9 17, 12829, 133, 137, 150, 15556,
12, 15, 17, 19, 4142, 67, 70, 79, 16668, 18695, 21719, 222, 232,
103, 120, 13435, 137, 14143, 238
146, 150, 159, 16163, 168, 175, Chrysostom, (Ps.-), 157, 16667
184, 190, 213, 218, 223, 22628, Cicero, 79, 118, 174, 206; De amicitia,
23047, 249 65, 6769, 7879, 131; De
Bertrada of Montfort, 30 inventione, 22, 29, 62, 67, 9799,
Besancon, 21, 25, 102 1045, 111, 127, 131, 153, 160,
index 301
181, 187; De ofciis, 67, 131; Super dilectio, 6566, 70, 7677, 13031,
topica, 52, 9799; Tusculanae 153, 175, 184, 189, 192, 264n
Disputationes, 157, 276n Dinah, 170
circumcision, 166, 17779, 183, 190, Dindimus, 133
218 Diodorus Sacraticus, 135
Cistercian Order, 811, 5455, 68, division, 53
14344, 148, 158, 16365 doubt, 128
Cteaux, 41, 120, 125, 148, 162 Dronke, Peter, 17
Clairvaux, 6, 4142, 63, 126, 234. See Duchesne, Andre, 1314
also Bernard of Clairvaux, St.
Clanchy, Michael T., 19, 253n
eclipses, 214
Clarembald of Arras, 86
Epicurus, Epicureans, 107, 18081,
Claudian, 209
18485
Clio. See Muses
Epistolae duorum amantium, 5, 6278,
Cluny, 243
118, 131, 146, 17172; letters 16:
Commentarius Cantabrigiensis, 194
6566; 18: 65; 21: 66, 170; 22: 71
communes, 14, 39, 23536
72; 23: 72; 24: 64, 6768; 25: 68
composition. See dictamen
69; 26: 72; 27: 172; 38: 73; 49: 63,
confession, 224
66, 69; 50: 6364, 66; 59: 72; 60:
Conon, cardinal bishop of Palestrina,
73; 66: 147; 69: 73, 170; 72: 72; 76:
40, 11920, 122
72; 79: 72; 82: 69, 7374, 152, 170;
consequences, 51
84: 74, 169; 87: 7576; 88: 72, 76;
continence, 134, 160, 163
95: 76; 102: 72; 103: 76; 104: 72;
Cornicius, 143
106: 76; 107: 76; 109: 76; 112: 76
Courcelles, Catherine II de, 13
77, 170; 112a: 77; 113: 78
Cousin, Victor, 1516, 252n
epitaphs (of Abelard and Heloise), 13,
creation, 37, 19597
249
cunnum, 135
equipollence, 96
Eriugena, 124
Esther, 159
Dagobert, 43
Ethica, 12, 23, 82, 120, 17986. See
David, 133, 135, 219
also Peter Abelard, Scito teipsum
deaconess, 16061, 163
Eucharist, 161, 233
Deborah, 159
Eugenius III, Pope, 241
Denis the Areopagite, 105, 124, 229
Eusebius of Caesarea, 124
30
Eustochium, 160
Descartes, Rene, 15
Eve, 36, 114, 178, 19799, 201, 208
Deutsch, Martin, 16, 253n
9
devil, 10, 38, 117, 185, 189, 197, 217,
evil, greatest, 18386, 215
236
excommunication, 224
dialectic, 11, 2257, 8196, 102, 117,
180, 228, 210, 232
dictamen, 6364, 73, 262n faith, denition of, 136, 207
dictum, 9192, 94 fashion, 30
differentia, 33, 5354, 85, 109 Fessler, Ignaz, 16
302 index
gurative speech, 4748, 5455, 88, grammatica, 23, 84, 211. See also
91, 111, 113 Priscian, Grammatical Institutes
lioque clause, 115, 21213 Grane, Lief, 18
Fontevrault, 197. See also Robert of Gregory the Great, 107, 127, 18485,
Arbrissel 210, 224
foreknowledge. See providence Grenaille, Francois de, 14
forms, 8385, 138 grief, 16768
France (royal domain), 63, 138 Gualo, 14243
Free will, 18893 Guibert of Nogent, 150
friendship. See amicitia Guy of Castello. See Celestine II,
Fulbert, 7, 5859, 77, 7980 Pope
Fulco of Beauvais, 22
Haimeric, 70, 227
Galo, 28, 30 Haimo of Auxerre, 188
Garland the Computist. See Gerland Hato, bishop of Troyes, 126, 148
of Besancon hell, 18485, 194, 218
Garlande. See Stephen of Garlande Heloise, 720, 5880, 118; abbess of
Garmundus, 46 Paraclete, 14859, 15673, 249; at
Gelasius II, Pope, 120 Argenteuil (111729), 79, 14648;
Genesis, 195201, 2089 birth and early education, 59, 262n;
Gennadius of Marseille, 132 burial, 4, 1314; critique of
genus, 2425, 3334, 44, 84, 87, 112, religious life, 17, 155; Easter plays,
21112. See also universals 159, 275n; knowledge of languages,
Geoffrey of Auxerre, 238, 241, 243, 162, 17172; letters (monastic) to
245 Abelard, 8, 15062; liturgical ideas,
Geoffrey of Chartres, 14243, 234 158, 16367; love affair with
Geoffrey of Courlon, 258n Abelard, 5880; love letters (see
Gerbert of Aurillac, 24 Epistolae duorum amantium);
Gerland of Besancon, 2527, 33, 44, marriage, 7, 6162, 79, 152; poems,
47, 4951, 56, 254n, 267n 1213, 7375, 14647, 172;
Gilbert of Poitiers, 1112, 137, 228 pregnancy, 7, 59, 79. See also
29, 240, 24647, 285n epitaphs; Peter Abelard, Rule for
Gilbert the Universal, 210 Paraclete
Gilduin, 40 Heloise, works of: Epithalamica, 146
Gilson, Etienne, 1617, 253n 47, 16869; Institutiones nostrae, 13,
Glosule in Priscianum, 2728, 31, 35, 16364; Laudis honor, 147;
38, 44, 4647, 5657, 246. See also Problemata, 172, 200202
Priscian, Grammatical Institutes Henry, archbishop of Sens, 142, 238
Godfrey of Reims, 6970, 73, 105, 42
263n Henry V, 120
good, supreme, 18386 herbs, 237
Goswin, 32, 122 heretics, 137, 184, 210, 223
grace, 175, 19395, 234 Hermes Trismegistus, 105, 124
grammarians, 46, 99 Hilary of Poitiers, 217
index 303
Hildegard of Bingen, 5, 172 13334, 145, 15053, 15758, 162,

Hilduin, 124 175, 18485, 224; Adversus
Holy Spirit, 89, 5455, 76, 104, 106, Vigilantium, 155; Contra Jovinianum,
11416, 118, 123, 132, 144, 150, 135
196, 24445 Jesus. See Christ
Honorius II, Pope, 146 Jews, 113, 116, 162, 166, 177180,
Horace, 22, 135 183
Hugh Metel, 1213, 172 Job, 150, 178, 188, 231
Hugh of St.-Victor, 41, 116, 117, 124, Joceran of Langres, 41
132, 14041, 16768, 184, 196, Johannes de Vepria, 63
209, 230, 232; De sacramentis, 205, John the Baptist, 166
207, 210, 214, 21819, 222, 23032; John of Cornwall, 232
De tribus diebus, 103104, 178; John of Reims, 27
Didascalicon, 41; Sententie de John of Salisbury, 1112, 25, 51, 89,
divinitate, 2056, 214, 21620, 232 143, 22829, 231, 240
Hyacinth, Cardinal, 235 Jolivet, Jean, 18, 253n
hypotheticals, 48, 53, 92, 97 Jonathan, 171
Jordan, 235
identity, 10811, 136, 211 Joscelin of Vierzy, 32, 3637, 83, 138,
Ididia, 72, 172 21011, 236, 257n
idolatry, 188 Judas, 218
ignorance, 141 Judith, 159
Ile-de-la-Cite. See Paris justitia, 18283, 188, 194, 200
imagination, 9091 Juvenal, 22
Index of Prohibited Books, 13
indifference (morally neutral), 162,
knowability. See scibilitas
18081, 185
Konsgen, Ewald, 63, 262n
indifferentia/indifferenter, 31, 36, 38, 67,
83, 93, 95, 97
individuality. See singularitas Lalanne, Ludovic, 16
inference, 26 Lanfranc, 102, 110
Innocent II, Pope, 9, 11, 148, 227, Laon, 29, 232, 235
23436, 248 La Rochefoucauld, Marie III de
intellectus, 48, 83, 9091, 99 (abbess of Paraclete 15991639),
intention, 33, 72, 77, 140, 154, 185, La Ronceray, Angers, 147
188, 193, 195, 199, 221 Lateran Council II, 227, 23435
Ivo of Chartres, 3738, 125, 127, 129 Laurence. See Hugh of St.-Victor,
130, 184 Sententie de divinitate
Iwakuma, Yukio, 254n, 255n Lazarus, 167
law, 17679, 18283, 191
Jacob, 170 Liber pancrisis, 38
Jean de Meun, 45, 8, 13 Lie`ge, 233
Jephthah, 170 Limoges, 146
Jerome, St., 9, 61, 65, 106, 12627, Loches, 21, 102
304 index
logica, 23, 28, 30, 44, 82, 97, 144, Metel. See Hugh Metel
180, 244 Michelet, Jules, 14, 252n
Lords Prayer, 16263 Milesian virgins, 135
Lothar III, 227 Milo of Therouanne, 238
Lotulf of Novara, 11921, 272n modal statements, 49, 89, 9596, 138,
Louis VI, 32, 39, 150, 22627 214
Louis VII (113780), 22627 Montier-la-Celle, 125, 164
love. See amicitia; amor; caritas; dilectio Moos, Peter von, 17, 253n, 262n
love songs. See Peter Abelard, love Morigny, 149
songs Murray, Albert, 18
Lucius II, Pope, 235 Muses, 73, 147
Luscombe, David, 18, 253n music, 133, 171
Macrobius, Dream of Scipio, 22, 1056, Nazarenes, 61

118, 134, 176; Saturnalia, 158, 161 Nebuchadnezzar, 133
Magdeburg, 142 negation, 48, 9394
magnanimity, 134, 160 Newman, Barbara, 18, 253n
Manegold of Lautenbach, 29, 105 Nicene Creed, 112, 115, 136
manuscripts: Munich, Clm 14479, nominales, 83
256n, 257n; Munich, Clm 14730, Norbert of Xanten, 142, 148, 213
272n; Orleans, Bibl. Mun. 266, 36; nudity, 199
Paris, BnF 7094A, 257n; Paris, BnF numbers, 87
13368, 33; Troyes, Bibl. Mun. 503,
287n; Troyes Bibl. Mun. 802, 13 Octavian. See Augustus (Caesar)
Marbod of Rennes, 23, 64, 69, 73 omnipotence, 122, 132, 13940, 208,
Marenbon, John, 18, 176, 253n, 21214, 247
255n, 256n, 257n, 261n, 267n, oratio, 29
268n, 280n Orelli, J. C., 16
Marie de France, 172 Origen, 81, 184, 18788, 190, 224
marriage, 135, 152 original sin, 3739, 117, 129, 134,
Martial, 135 166, 168, 175, 178, 19092, 199,
Mary, Virgin, 36, 159, 165, 168 247
Mary Magdalene, 14647, 15960, Otloh of St. Emmeram, 150
16364, 16869 Otto of Freising, 25, 121, 137, 229,
Matilda, countess of Blois and 246, 247, 283n, 286n
Champagne, 148 Otto of Lucca, 23031
matter, 138 Ovid, 9, 2223, 77, 15152, 157, 174,
Matthew of Albano, 146, 233 263; Amores, 134; Ars amatoria, 88,
Maximus of Turin, 132 153, 157, 233; Heroides, 14, 6970;
maxims, 50, 9699 Remedium amoris, 78
Mercury. See Hermes Trismegistus
meretrix, 152 pagan philosophers, 39, 61, 1057,
Metamorphosis Goliae, 246 13335, 141, 15860, 179, 196,
metaphor. See gurative speech; 222, 231
translatio Paraclete (oratory, abbey), 6, 8, 126;
index 305
liturgy, 13, 16365; monastic Expositio in Ezechielem, 40, 75, 171;

observances, 16364. See also Peter Expositio in Hexaemeron, 75, 165,
Abelard, Rule; Heloise 195200; Glossae super Porphyrium
paralogisms, 36 secundum vocales, 82, 109;
Paris, 7, 14243, 150, 231, 23538 Grammatica, 138, 144, 214; Historia
Paschasius Radbertus, 104 calamitatum, 3, 79, 21, 67, 7172,
Paul, St., 11, 61, 81, 124, 130, 134, 73, 79, 81, 101, 121, 126, 135, 145,
15758, 167, 18695 149, 15056, 173, 186, 208, 215,
Paula, 151, 160 221, 248; Hymnarius Paraclitensis,
Pelagius, 223 16465; Introductiones parvulorum,
Persius, 63 3536; liber sententiarum magistri
Peter Abelard: burial 4, 1314, 248; Petri, 23435, 239, 243; Logica
castration, 89, 201; at Cluny, 248; Ingredientibus, 81100, 118, 125;
debate with William of Champeaux, LI sup. Per., 36, 8996; LI sup.
3133, 4546; early studies, 7; Pred., 8589; LI sup. Por., 8285,
family origins, 7, 21; humor, 35, 109; LI sup. Top., 96100; Logica
114; at Laon, 3740; letters to Nostrorum petitioni sociorum, 136;
Heloise and nuns of Paraclete, 17 Planctus, 17072; Problemata
18, 15364; love letters (see Heloissae, 200202; Rethorica, 100,
Epistolae duorum amantium); love 269n; Rule, 16062; Scito teipsum,
songs. 60, 6263, 78 marriage, 7, 190, 200, 204, 210, 216, 22024,
61, 79; at Melun, 3031; at Notre- 244; Sententie [secundum magistrum
Dame, 4042, 5962; at Paraclete, Petrum, of dialectic], 36; Sententie
12643; at Paris (Ste-Genevie`ve), [of theology], 204, 21719; Sic et
9, 2045; sermons, 16568, 179; at non, 15, 68, 122, 12531, 140, 158,
Soissons, 11922; at St.-Denis, 81, 187, 204, 205, 213, 223, 231, 235;
101; at Ste.-Genevie`ve, 31; at St.- Soliloquium, 175; Theologia
Gildas, 145, 149, 176, 204 Christiana, 14, 61, 103, 107, 122,
Peter Abelard, works of: Anthropologia, 124, 12829, 13140, 144, 147,
156, 190, 216, 218; Apologia contra 157, 175, 177, 180, 187, 205, 209,
Bernardum, 239; Carmen ad 21314, 235; Theologia Scholarium,
Astralabium, 2023; Collationes, 68, 10, 68, 147, 177, 180, 18788, 190,
107, 131, 17586, 195, 198, 205, 193, 19495, 20416, 231, 23439,
210, 21415, 220, 222, 244; Comm. 24344; Theologia Summi boni,
in Epist. ad Romanos, 18695, 203 100, 10322, 139; Tractatus de
5, 214, 218, 223, 237, 244, 251n; intellectibus, 138, 144
Confessio dei Universis, 243; Peter of Blois, 70
Dialectica, 15, 40, 4357, 68, 71, Peter of Bruys, 210
82, 85, 8788, 92, 103, 106, 107, Peter Helias, 28
111, 113, 115, 125, 128, 138; Peter Lombard, 4, 23132
Dialogus (see Collationes); Editio Peter the Venerable, 4, 59, 148, 172,
super Porphyrium, Aristotelem, 233, 24243, 245
Boethium [litteral glosses], 3235; Philip I, 30
Ep. IX, 200; Epithalamica (see physica, 23, 82, 84, 120, 195, 197, 229
Heloise); Ethica (see Scito teipsum); Pierre Col, 42
306 index
Plato, 45, 84, 88, 11314, 137, 175, Robert of Molesme, 125
197; Timaeus, 54, 1047, 13234 Robert Pullen, 23132
Plotinus, 175 Robl, Werner, 262n
Poirel, Dominique, 103, 270n Rochefoucauld, Marie IV de la, 14
Porphyry, Isagoge, 15, 2325, 3335, rolls, funerary, 110, 16163
43 Romance of the Rose, see Jean de Meun
Prayer, 184, 194 Roscelin of Compie`gne, 2125, 28,
predestination. See providence 30, 44, 56, 5859, 81, 85, 101103,
Premontre, 120, 142. See also Norbert 106, 108, 11011, 117, 119, 121,
of Xanten 127, 13536, 209, 211, 236, 238,
Priscian, Grammatical Institutes, 22, 27, 242, 253n, 260n
46, 56, 84, 110, 127 Rule. See Augustine, St.; Benedict,
proposition, 26, 34, 87, 9194, 96, Rule of
269n Ruys, Juanita Feros, 172, 264n, 278n,
proprium, 24, 4749 282n
prostitute. See meretrix
providence, 84, 9495, 13738, 151 Sabellianism, 119, 121, 137
Provins, 126. See also St.-Ayoul sacraments, 37, 141, 167, 175, 193,
Psalter, 158, 228 205, 218, 232, 248
purgatory, 156, 179, 18384, 223 Salutations, 15152, 154
Samson, 72, 135, 171
qualities, 2627, 34, 46, 8889, 137 Samson of Reims, 236, 24043
quantity, 8788 Saul, 133, 135, 171
Schmeidler, Bernhard, 17
Ralph of Laon, 38 scibilitas (knowability), 45, 7071, 88
Ralph of Vermandois, 143, 14647, Scripture, 1012, 39, 41, 1034, 118,
236 12729, 13233, 135, 145, 153, 155
redemption, 11, 3338, 117, 18892, 57, 161, 165167, 17071, 174, 177
238, 248 78, 185, 188, 191201, 2068, 210,
Reims, 24, 27, 37, 40, 70, 102, 235 213, 216, 219, 222
36, 238 seal, bronze, 21213, 237
relation, 4445, 8889 Seneca, 23, 142, 15254, 162, 180,
Remusat, C. de, 16, 253n 187
renunciation, 134, 160, 163 Sens, cathedral, 40, 126, 240
repentance, 156, 167, 179, 18384, Sens, Council of (1141), vii, 5, 11
202, 22224 12, 228, 24046
rhetoric, 28, 56, 9799, 111, 127, Sententie Anselmi, 3738, 231, 258n
280n Sententie divine pagine, 3839, 104,
Rhetorica ad Herennium (ps.-Cicero), 258n
29, 86 Sententie magistri A., 37, 126, 128,
rhetorical exercises. See dictamen 258n
rhyming prose, 152, 205 Serlo of Bayeux, 73
Richard of Poitiers, 253n sermo, 136
Robert de Bardi, 13 sexual desire, 37, 130, 135, 153, 158,
Robert of Arbrissel (d. 1117), 102 162, 178, 192, 199, 201, 22021
Robert of Melun, 228, 232 Signy, 233
index 307
silence, 163 Summa sententiarum, 206, 230, 285n.

sin, 118, 19293, 2003 See also Otto of Lucca
singularitas (individuality), 67 Sybils, 106, 135, 159
Socrates, 36, 61, 175, 182 syllogisms, 28, 43, 50, 53
Soissons, Council of (1121), 8, 22,
40, 119122, 12526, 234 tablets, wax. See wax tablets
Solomon, 72, 135 Tanchelin of Utrecht, 210
Song of Songs, 65, 7071, 74, 141, Terence, 210
155, 233 Theobald, Count of Blois and
Sorbonne, 13, 15 Champagne, 125, 142, 148
soul, 54 Theobald, archdeacon, 150
specialis, 33, 66, 15657 Theologia, 103, 105, 120, 123, 132,
species, 24, 3334, 44, 112, 21112 144, 180, 216
Sponsus (drama), 146 Theophrastus, 135
Stars, 197 Thierry of Chartres, 11, 23, 26, 86,
Statius, 22 108, 117, 124, 138, 19596, 285n
St.-Ayoul, 125 Thomas of Morigny, 237, 23940
St.-Denis, 7, 8, 52, 81, 101, 122, 125, Thomas of St.-Victor, 150
14546, 22627, 230 Thomas Aquinas, 4, 16
Ste.-Genevie`ve, Montagne, 9, 31, Time, 8788
228, 235 Topics, 26, 29, 5051, 96100
Ste.-Genevie`ve (abbey), 9, 3132, Tournai, 241
126, 143, 14950, 227. See also Tours, 21, 30, 102,
Stephen of Garlande Trainel, 163
St.-Eloi (Paris), 30 translatio, 84, 86, 91, 93, 95, 113. See
Ste.-Marie de Footel (Malnoue), 148 also gurative speech
Stephen of Garlande, 3032, 120, Trinity, 31, 3839, 10121, 13240,
126, 142, 146, 14950, 204, 226, 21113, 24345
239, 258n Trois-Fontaines, 41
Stephen Harding, 41, 162, 165 Troyes, Councils of: (year) 1107, 30;
Stephen, cardinal bishop of Palestrina, (year) 1128, 142
241
Stephen of Senlis, 14243 Ulger, bishop of Angers, 37, 13637,
St.-Evroul (Normandy), 27 210
St.-Gildas, 149, 166, 176 unbaptized infants, 19091
St.-Jean (Laon), 146 understandings. See Intellectus
St.-Medard (Soissons), 32, 122, 233 universals, 15, 2526, 39, 48, 5556,
Stoics, 25, 18081, 188 68, 8283, 87, 90, 136. See also
St.-Victor, 40, 42, 143 genus
substance, 24, 46, 107, 12829, 131,
136 Venus, 135, 146
substantive verb, 28, 47, 9192 vice, 18284, 187, 190, 204, 213, 221
suffering, 6768, 18586, 191, 21617 23
Suger, abbot of St.-Denis, 8, 36, 126, Virgil, 22
134, 143, 14546, 22627, 230, viriditas (freshness, greenness), 65
236, 240 virtue, 134, 17984, 203
308 index
Vital of Mortain (of Savigny), 146, William of Conches, 11, 28, 55, 86,
170 195, 229, 255n, 261n
vocalists, 2327, 31, 83 William of St.-Thierry, 10, 4142,
70, 79, 12021, 126, 134, 175,
Waddell, Chrysogonus, 277n, 278n 190, 22628, 23234, 237, 244,
Walter of Mortagne, 79, 83, 2068, 259n
23132, 236, 239, 283n, 286n Wolfelm of Brauweiler, 105
wax tablets, 64 women, role of, 102, 15960, 16466
Weingart, Richard, 18 world soul, 3435, 1034, 112, 114
Will, 19495, 201, 203, 22021 15, 133, 135, 237
William of Champeaux, 7, 15, 18, 28 Wulstan, David, 159, 275n, 277n
42, 4351, 97100, 5657, 7, 15,
18, 67, 83, 95, 1024, 18991, 112 Xanthippe, 61
13, 11617, 14041, 108, 110, 120, Xenophon, 62
134, 137, 143, 174, 233, 255n,
256n, 259n, 267n Zeuxis, 160

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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

john scottus eriugena

abelard and heloise

Copyright 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

theological discussions ever offered for human consumptionnot surpris-

reection on what they had to say. Taken individually, volumes in the

courage readers to deepen their linguistic skills to get to know Abelard

in Twelfth-Century France (New York: St.

Works of Abelard and Heloise, and Reports of

Carmen Carmen ad Astralabium, ed. Jose M. A. Rubingh-

Heloises? ed. Ewald Konsgen (Leiden: Brill,

Liturgy Series 89, 2 vols. (Gethsemani Ab-

Sent. Parisienses Sententie Parisienses, ed. A. M. Landgraf, Ecrits

Works of Other Writers

Bernard, SBO Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, 8 vols.

Gerland, Dialectica Garlandus Compotista, Dialectica, ed. Lambert

Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny (ca. 10941156), speaks glowingly

which Abelard, Heloise, and Bernard shared a common desire to go be-

Images of Abelard and Heloise

T here is a mythic quality to the lives of Peter Abelard and Heloise

that led to his writing on theology being condemned as heretical at the

by William of St.-Thierry, Bernard caricatures Abelard as a self-important

Bernard portrays Abelard as a stereotype of everything that the true in-

was so eminent in logic that he alone was thought to converse with

By composing, by versifying, by renewing familiar words in new combi-

name of Abelard, not of Heloise, a practice followed in 1855 when

rst delivered as lectures to the Colle`ge de France in 193637.29 Never

Two books, both published in 1997, epitomize quite different ap-

The Early Years

Abelard would subsequently criticize many inadequacies in the teaching

The Emergence of Vocalist Dialectic,

Of these disciplines, it was dialectic, the study of rational argument, that

The curriculum Roscelin followed had been established by Gerbert of

ing.10 Following Porphyry, Boethius bequeathed to Latin philosophical

understand basic precepts of dialectic, given the burdensome and thus

William of Champeaux (ca. 10601122)

Grammar deals with correct speech, rhetoric with persuasion, dialectic

of secular canons) by Louis VI around 1108/9, about the same time as

Goswin, who prided himself on having dared to resist Abelard in argu-

and Boethius, perhaps recording a separate delivery of the same lectures,

Whereas Aristotle had conned himself to generalities with examples like

Other Early Writings on Dialectic

extant, that he called Introductiones parvulorum, which may have been

Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux

A number of William of Champeauxs students became in turn teachers

adviser to the king of France.71 Ulger, bishop of Angers (11251148), was

authority of Scripture as well as through reason in that the Father is him

In 1115, just as Abelard was reaching the pinnacle of his reputation

T he Dialectica, dedicated to the education of the sons of his brother

pretation he attributes to Plato that a relative exists as something. With-

happen other than as God foresees) is false. There is no comparable dis-

is always on correct appreciation of the meaning of words used to denote

substantive of the species. He identies the problem as caused by William

exist within specic individuals. He could be referring to Platonists such

thoritative source of teaching about the meaning of words by William of

Heloise and Discussion

B y late 1115, a major upheaval was beginning to shake Abelards ac-

Considering everything which customarily binds lovers, I thought I could

mistress) evokes an ideal of friendship very different from the image of

The Epistolae duorum amantium

sweetness of composition and melody, so that the sweetness of the melody