Letters of Peter Abelard, Beyond the Personal

6. Letter Fifteen. To His Comrades, against Abbot Bernard

6 letter fifteen. To His Comrades, against Abbot Bernard The present letter relates to the famous collision between Peter Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux at the Council of Sens, which was ostensibly concerned with Abelard’s Theologia but which had motivations and implications that transcended this one treatise and the teachings associated with it. The chronology of this council has been the object of copious analysis.1 If an opinio communis now builds and holds around a dating of the council in 1141, the sequence of events would take the following shape. (If not, then in most cases a year would need to be subtracted from most of the following dates, since previously the prevailing tendency was to peg the council on Sunday and Monday, 2–3 June 1140.) In Lent of 1140 Bernard of Clairvaux receives from his close friend William of St. Thierry a letter-treatise. In it William impugns thirteen allegedly mistaken  1. The fullest and most recent stocktaking in English, together with a presentation of the council in a broad sociohistorical context, can be had in Constant J. Mews, “The Council of Sens (1141): Bernard, Abelard and the Fear of Social Upheaval ,” Speculum 77 (2002): 342–82. Other important studies that have appeared lately are Peter Godman, The Silent Masters: Latin Literature and Its Censors in the High Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 61–103; Wim Verbaal, “Sens: Une victoire d’écrivain. Les deux visages du procès d’Abélard,” in Pierre Abélard. Colloque international de Nantes, 77–89; and Pietro Zerbi, “Philosophi” e “Logici”: Un ventennio di incontri e scontri: Soissons, Sens, Cluny (1121–1141), Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo: Nuovi studi storici 59 (Rome: Nella sede dell’Istituto, Palazzo Borromini, 2002). doctrines of Abelard, who was once (but is no longer?) a friend of his.2 Even if Bernard nurses no hidden grudges against Abelard for past injuries to himself or to his supporters, the climate is bound to be tense. The boundaries between teachings and writings look hazy, as do those between a master’s teachings and his students’ reports of them. It is not possible always to differentiate emphatically between what a teacher teaches and what his listeners understand. As a consequence masters are often held accountable for the impressions (and misimpressions) their followers take away from lectures, in notes, in memories, or in both. The issue of responsibility would be particularly problematic in the case of Abelard, who has been testing the patience of conservatives in the Church by his readiness, when confronting questions or uncertainties in doctrine, to apply logical analysis rather than to content himself with citing authorities. Matters are not helped by the fact that Bernard is able to present Abelard as being in an unholy alliance with a former student of his, Arnold of Brescia (about 1090–1155). For rebelling against his bishop in Brescia and for speaking out against the policy of allowing the Church to own property, the canon and abbot Arnold has been ex-    bernard of clairvaux 2. On William’s relationship with Abelard and knowledge of his writings and thought, see Jean Châtillon, “Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, le monachisme et les écoles: À propos de Rupert de Deutz, d’Abélard et de Guillaume de Conches,” in Saint-Thierry: Une abbaye du VIe au XXe siècle: Actes du Colloque international d’histoire monastique , Reims-Saint-Thierry, 11 au 14 octobre 1976, ed. Michel Bur (Saint-Thierry, France: Association des Amis de l’Abbaye de Saint-Thierry, 1979), 375–94; Thomas Michael Tomasic, “William of Saint-Thierry against Peter Abelard: A Dispute on the Meaning of Being a Person,” Analecta Cisterciensia 28 (1972): 3–76; and Piero Zerbi, “Guillaume de Saint-Thierry et son différend avec Abélard,” in Saint-Thierry, une abbaye du VIe au XXe siècle, Actes du colloque international d’histoire monastique, Reims-Saint-Thierry, 1977 (Saint-Thierry, France: Association des Amis de l’Abbaye de Saint-Thierry, 1977), 395–412, repr. in Pietro Zerbi, Ecclesia in hoc mundo posita: Studi di storia e di storiografia medioevale raccolti in occasione del 70o genetliaco dell’autore, ed. Maria Pia Alberzoni, Bibliotheca erudita: Studi e documenti di storia e filologia 6 (Milan, Italy: Vita e pensiero, 1993), 549–76. On his correspondence with Bernard, see Jean Leclercq, “Les lettres de Guillaume de Saint-Thierry à saint Bernard,” Revue bénédictine 79 (1968): 375–91, at 375–82, and M. Basil Pennington, “The...