Abelard (Abailardus, Abaelardus), Peter

ABELARDO (Abaelardus, Abailardus), PIETRO. - French philosopher and theologian.

1. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Born in 1079 at Pallet (Palatium), a village in Lesser Brittany, about 20 km east of Nantes; died on 21 April 1142 in the monastery of Saint-Marcel-sur-Saône. From his father Berengar, who before embracing the career of arms had spent some years over books, he inherited a lively love of letters, and, while still very young, according to the custom of the time, he took to attending the schools of the most celebrated masters of dialectic.

At that time the controversy over the value of universals was raging, which was a specifically philosophical problem of the 12th century, and A. had the fortune to have as his teachers the heads of the two rival schools: Roscelin (nominalist) and William of Champeaux (realist). The young Breton soon showed a subtle intellect and a prodigious facility for learning the arts of the trivium and quadrivium, a proud and exuberant disposition, and a fervent passion for the battles of the intellect.

After traveling through various provinces of France he settled in Paris, in the school of the cathedral, under the discipline of William of Champeaux. But his restless and presumptuous spirit led him to criticize the master's teaching and thus to incur the enmity of him and of many fellow students. Not yet twenty-three, he then opened a school of his own at Melun, the seat of the court, which he later moved to Corbeil, in order to be closer to the capital. But an exhaustion brought on by his immoderate application to study forced him to return to his province and obliged him, for some years, to a relative rest.

Having recovered his health, he moved to Paris to study rhetoric under the direction of William himself. There he resumed the struggle against his professor, and forced him, as A. himself states, to retract and to abandon his position on the question of universals (Historia calamitatum: PL 178, 119). This capitulation ruined the reputation of the old master, who nonetheless had a glorious past, and made famous the young professor, who did not delay in founding outside the city walls, on the top of St. Geneviève, a school, which soon enjoyed great success.

Having defeated his master in dialectic and rhetoric, A. wished to reap laurels also in sacred science, and went to Laon, to the school of theology of the illustrious Anselm. He found this teacher inferior to the reports that circulated about him, capable indeed, but weak in reasoning: «He kindled the fire, and instead of giving light to the house, he filled it with smoke. To those who regarded him from afar he appeared all a pomp of leaves, but on drawing near to scrutinize him well, he proved instead unfruitful» (ibid., 123). He attempted to make him suffer the same fate as William and claimed to hold in his school certain lectures on Ezekiel. But Anselm's protests and hostility were such that he had to leave Laon.

He repaired again to Paris, where he obtained the direction of the school of Notre-Dame and where he taught philosophy and theology. Among the scholars who flocked to him from every part of France and Europe were 19 cardinals, more than 50 future bishops, and one (Celestine II) who reached the papacy. Even the tribune Arnold of Brescia attended his lectures.

But precisely during the period of his teaching at Notre-Dame occurred the love affair with Heloise and the atrocious vengeance taken for it by the canon Fulbert, the girl's uncle. The uproar that arose around the affair obliged him to withdraw to the abbey of St. Denis, while Heloise took the veil in the monastery of Argenteuil. The two did not completely break off their relations, but the well-known epistolary correspondence that they would subsequently exchange, according to the latest investigations of criticism, turns out to be a literary fiction of the restless master. The monastic habit did not change his character and he, at the invitation of his pupils, resumed his lectures and his battles for philosophy.

He had a violent polemic with Roscelin (Epist., 19 and 15: PL 178, 356-72), and was struck by a condemnation of the Council of Soissons, on account of his treatise De unitate et trinitate divina (1121). Confined, as a punishment, in the convent of St. Medard, he was, after a few days, released by the cardinal legate Cono of Urach, who had presided over the council, and sent back to St. Denis. Later we find him in the solitude of the Paraclete, near Troyes. But the desert, in which he had sought refuge, soon became a much-frequented school. In 1125 he was elected abbot of St. Gildas at Rhuys in Brittany, and, subsequently (1129), returned to the Paraclete, already ceded to Heloise and her companions, driven from Argenteuil by the abbot Suger. There he attended to their assistance. John of Salisbury shows him again in 1136 in the chair on the hill of St. Geneviève, intent on struggling against the sect of the Cornificians. These, however, were the last triumphs of his teaching career: a grave storm was gathering over his head. Accused once again of heresy, he had on this occasion as his adversary St. Bernard and was summoned to judgment by the Council of Sens (June 1141). A. would have wished to discuss, but he was invited to disavow the incriminated propositions and to retract. He preferred to appeal to the Pope and set out for Rome where he counted powerful friends. But having learned that Innocent II had confirmed the sentence and the condemnation, he stopped at Cluny. There Peter the Venerable received him with kindness, and succeeded in reconciling him with St. Bernard, in removing from his head the effects of the pontifical condemnation, and in inspiring in him a sincerely Catholic retraction.

There A. piously died. His body was caused to be transported by the abbot of Cluny himself to the Paraclete. Today the mortal remains of A. and of Heloise, transferred to Père-Lachaise in Paris in 1817, rest united in a single tomb.

2. THE WORKS: 1. Philosophical works: the practice has become established, with Geyer, of distinguishing three groups of A.'s logical writings: a) Literal glosses on isolated treatises, which the author called Introductions parvulorum. Cousin collected and published them from various manuscripts, but not all have had the honor of print. They are earlier than 1121.

b) Coordinated expositions of the whole of logic, composed between 1113 and 1120. This systematic logic has come down to us in a twofold form, according to the two Incipit: Ingredientibus and Nostorum petitioni sociorum. Geyer published the Glosses on Porphyry, as well as the Glosses on the Categories and the Glossulae super Porphirium.

c) The Dialectic, a complete treatise of logic, regular and methodical, personal and not a commentary on the thought of others. In it William of Champeaux and Roscelin, who died in 1121, are mentioned, and this reference suggests that the work was written after the said year, because the author never names these masters in other works, while they were still living. The treatise was published in large part by Cousin.

2. Theological works: De unitate et trinitate divina, a short work condemned by the Council of Soissons, which has come down to us in a double redaction. — Theologia christiana, 2nd ed. revised and enlarged of the preceding treatise. It is A.'s revenge against the council. — Theologia, a reworking of the second treatise. We possess the first part of it under the false title of Introductio ad theologiam. — Sic et non, a compilation of texts, as the author says, apparently contradictory, extracted from Scripture and the Fathers, to resolve numerous theological problems. We have of this work German editions reproduced by Migne and the edition of Cousin. L. Tosti, making use of a manuscript of Montecassino, added new and important fragments.

3. Exegetical and apologetic works: the Expositio in Hexaëmeron and the Commentariorum super s. Pauli epistolam ad Romanos libri quinque. — Scito te ipsum, a treatise on morals more philosophical than religious. — Dialogus inter philosophum et christianum, an original apology for Christianity. — Sermones, ascetic lectures, for the most part addressed to the nuns of the Paraclete.

We also cite: the Historia calamitatum, and the Letters, of interest for A.'s biography; the Problemata, the Apologia or Apologeticus, a justifying memorial composed after the condemnation of the Council of Sens to be sent to Rome, and finally the Carmen ad Astrolabium, published in full by Barthélemy Hauréau in Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale, XXXIV, 2nd part, Paris 1893, p. 153 ff. Lastly the Hymni.

Important is the contribution made by A. both to philosophy and to scholastic theology. In the strictly philosophical field his name is linked to the solution of the question of universals. No one better than he understood and assimilated, in the early years of the 12th century, the Aristotelian doctrine of knowledge. He distinguishes between sensory and imaginative perception, common to men and animals, and abstractive perception, proper to the rational creature. The content of the latter is given by the senses, and constitutes the process necessary for the intellect to grasp the common resemblance of individuals, that is, the very nature of beings and of objects. The universal is the result of the effort of this abstraction. It is not a thing (res), nor a word (sex), but a concept (sermo). A. is the first in the Middle Ages to consider clearly the ideal value of universals.

A. was also one of the principal moralists of his time. The Know thyself is a treatise on morals not devoid of originality. Two important principles are set forth in it: that intention can make our actions good or bad, and that error in judgment diminishes guilt.

Nor are his merits in the theological field any less. He was one of the forerunners of the doctrinal movement that brought dialectic into the very heart of the highest theological speculation. Even grave errors are not lacking in his works, but he certainly made a notable contribution to the science of the Middle Ages with the proclamation of the distinction between philosophy and theology. He further perfected the method of teaching in sacred science. The treatise Sic et non, in which contradictory testimonies drawn from Scripture and the Fathers are brought together, has in this regard a historical importance. It is the didactic process of adducing the arguments in favor and then those against, and finally the solution. The process developed and took more definite form in Alexander of Hales and in St. Thomas Aquinas.

And one must not exaggerate the rationalism of this powerful thinker: between faith and reason he establishes a close bond. "I do not wish to be a philosopher," he wrote to Heloise, "if I must rebel against Paul, nor to become an Aristotle, if I must break away from Christ" (Ep., 17: PL 178, 375).

The most recent historians of medieval thought tend to rehabilitate him. More than in the principles that seem today unassailable, he sometimes failed in their use and application (cf. M. Grabmann, Storia della teologia cattolica, Italian trans., Milan 1932, p. 41 ff.).

Studies: Ch. Rémusat, Abelard, 2 vols., Paris 1845; L. Tosti, Storia di Abelardo e dei suoi tempi, Naples 1851; M. Grabmann, Die Gesch. d. scholast. Methode, II, Freiburg im Br. 1911, pp. 168-229; B. Geyer, Die Stellung Aboelards in der Universallentfrage nach neuen handschriftlichen Texten, in Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. Mittelalter: Suppl. Festgabe zum 60. Geburtstag Cl. Baeumbers, 1913, pp. 101-27; F. Ueberweg-B. Geyer, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie: Die patristische und scholastische Phil., 2nd ed., Berlin 1928, pp. 213-26; C. Ottaviano, Pietro Abelardo. La vita, le opere, il pensiero, Rome 1931; G. De Giuli, Abelardo e la morale, in Giornale critico della filos. ital., 12 (1931), pp. 33-44; G. Delagneau, Le Concile de Sens, de 1140. Abelard et S. Bernard, in Rev. apologétique, 52 (1931), I pp. 385-408; J. G. Sickes, Peter Aboelard, Cambridge 1932; J. Cottiaux, La conception de la théologie chez Abelard, in Rev. Hist. eccl., 28 (1932).

pp. 247-95, 533-51, 788-828; J. Rivière, Les « capitula » d'Abélard condamnés au concile de Sens, in Recherches de Théol. Ancienne et Médiévale, 5 (1933), pp. 5-22; M. De Wulf, Histoire de la philosophie médiévale, I, 6th ed., Paris 1934, pp. 200-11, Italian trans., I, Florence 1944, pp. 193-204; H. Wandel, Peter A., London 1935.