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Peter Abelard and the Enigma of Dialogue ConstantJ. Mews PETER ABELARD (1079-1142) is OFTEN remembered as a victim of persecution . Punished by castration in 1117 following his affair with Heloise, then accused of heresy at the Council of Soissons in 1121 and again by Bernard of Clairvaux at the Council of Sens in 1140, Abelardhas long been considered a forerunnerof the causeof toleration in the West. At one stage in his career, he contemplated going to live in Muslim territory, where he thought he would be made more welcome than in Christendom. Abelard lived at a time of unusual interest by some Latin scholars in the non-Latin world, even though strong forces were afoot to re-assert Latin orthodoxy in Europe and the Middle East.1 His Dialogue of a Philosopher withaJew and a Christian or Cottationes has been seen by some as a plea for intellectual toleration.2 Is this too idealistic a perspective?Was he rejecting a contemporary trend toward exclusion of the outsider, or did he in fact participate in that movement Anna Sapir Abulafia has identified as the Christianization of reason in the twelfth century, by which Christian thinkers found reasons for proving that Jews and pagans were blind to the truth?3 In order to assess Abelard's contribution to the idea and practice of religious toleration , we need to relate his Dialqgus both to his other writings and to those of his contemporaries, for whom dialogue was often a technique for asserting the truth rather than for engaging in a listening exercise. The Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and aChristian Abelard's Dialogus comprisestwo separate conversations, one of a philosopher with a Jew, the other of a philosopher with a Christian, introduced I 26 The Medieval Balance by a prologue in which Abelard describes how he saw in a dream that he was asked by three individuals to adjudicatetheir debate about which path to take to supreme truth. When he asked their identity, they replied that they were pursuing the worship of one God "serving him variouslyin faith and way of life" (5-7; Payer, 19).* The philosopher explained that he had long pursued truth with philosophical reasoning, and that he had turned to moral philosophy, "which is the end of all disciplines and which I have judged to be tasted above all other things" (20-21; Payer, 20). He asked what both Jews and Christians taught about the supreme good and the supreme evil. Having found Jews foolish and Christians mad, he sought a rational conclusion to their debate. With no little self-confidence, Abelard had the philosopher praise his own skill and capacity both in philosophical and divine matters, demonstrated through "that wonderfulwork of the Theologia which envy could neither tolerate nor has been able to destroy, but which it has made more glorious by persecution" (50-52; Payer, 2122 ). The prologue concludes with Abelard's recollection of an adage, in fact a remark of Augustine: No teaching, as one of our own remembers,is so false that it does not contain some truth; I also consider that no disputation is so frivolous, that it does not provide some lesson. As the greatest of the wise said at the very beginning of his Proverbs [i:5], by hearing a, wiseperson will be wiser, an intelligent person will acquire the art of guidance, and James the apostle [i:19], Let every man be quick to listen, but slaw to speak. (68-78; Payer, 23; Payer's emphasis)5 Abelard was reminding his audience that the roots of toleration were to be found in the wisdom of Jewish and Christian tradition. The two dialogues which follow serve to instruct the reader in the underlying validity of Augustine's dictum. The discussion is not a report of an actualexchange between three parties but an extended argument about the foundations of ethics and the nature of good and evil. Perhaps the biggest problem confronting any student of the Dialqgus is lack of scholarly agreement about its date. This question relates to the broader issue of its interpretation. The traditional argument that Abelard wrote the Dialogus in his final years at Cluny (1140-42) derives from the claim that it isincomplete, and that therefore it must have been interrupted by his death. The second debate concludes with a lengthy dissertation by the Christian on the nature of the supreme good, but leaves space forfurther discussion: Unless I am mistaken, I have said enough...

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