Letters of Peter Abelard, Beyond the Personal

7. Apologia against Bernard of Clairvaux

7 apologia against bernard of clairvaux The work discussed and translated here has been known in Latin both after its intended target as the Apologia contra Bernardum (Apologia against Bernard) and after its opening words as the Apologia “Ne iuxta Boethianum” (Apologia [with the Opening Words] “In Keeping with That Dictum of Boethius”). The Gesta Frederici imperatoris (Deeds of Emperor Frederick), which the Cistercian Otto of Freising (after 1111–1158) composed shortly after Abelard’s death, refers to the text as the Apollogeticum (sic) of Abelard and quotes its opening words.1 Thomas of Morigny refers to it both as the Apologia and the Apologeticum .2 Most emphatically not to be confused with Abelard’s Apologia is another against Bernard and others who condemned Peter Abelard, the earliest known writing by Berengar of Poitiers, an extremely satirical text written soon after the Council of Sens, which Berengar had himself witnessed.3  1. Otto of Freising, Gesta Frederici, 1.52, ed. Schmale, pp. 234, line 28–236, line 11; Deeds of Frederick, 1.51 (49), trans. Mierow, 87–88. On Otto’s observations on Abelard, see Robert Folz, “Otton de Freising, témoin de quelques controverses intellectuelles de son temps,” Bulletin de la Société historique et archéologique de Langres 13 (1958): 70–89, at 77–78, and Fiorella Vergani, “‘Sententiam vocum seu nominum non caute theologiae admiscuit’: Ottone di Frisinga di fronte ad Abelardo,” Aevum 63 (1989): 193–224. 2. For references, see Apologia contra Bernardum, ed. Buytaert, 359. 3. Ed. Rodney M. Thomson, “The Satirical Works of Berengar of Poitiers: An Edition with Introduction,” Mediaeval Studies 42 (1980): 89–138, at 111–38. For fundamental analysis, see Luscombe, School of Abelard, 29–49. Around the time of the Council of Sens Abelard undertook to rebut the list of his alleged heresies that Bernard of Clairvaux and his allies had compiled.4 Bernard and Abelard’s other critics took unanimous offense at Abelard’s methods in theology in general as well as at specific doctrines they believed him to hold.5 For his information about Abelard’s methods and doctrines, Bernard relied on a compilation of capitula (“headings,” “sections,” or “counts” of an indictment ) that William of St. Thierry, his fellow Cistercian, assembled .6 William drew in turn on a culling that was accomplished by an unidentified excerptor from a lost work known as the Liber sententiarum (Book of Sentences or Book of Opinions).7 Other collections of sentences are extant, which seem to rest (directly or indirectly) on notes of students who heard his lectures.8 Insofar as the nature of the Liber sententiarum can be determined, it seems to have been an altogether different sort of work from run-of-the-mill “sentences” or opinions. Although Bernard and his party held it to be representative of Abelard’s teaching and thinking, Abelard staunchly denied authorship of it. Bernard directed a letter to Pope Innocent II (which circulated among a wider audience than even the curia alone) as a broadside against the heretical doctrines he accused Abelard of having espoused .9 To defend himself, Abelard eventually wrote an apologia in which he sought to parry one by one each of the nineteen charges    bernard of clairvaux 4. Otto of Freising reports that Abelard wrote the Apologia much later, while at Cluny, but Otto makes mistakes on other details of Abelard’s life and there is good reason to infer that this dating is inaccurate. 5. Luscombe, School of Peter Abelard, 110. 6. On the relationship between Abelard and William of St. Thierry, see Jean-Marie Dechanet, “L’amitié d’Abélard et de Guillaume de Saint-Thierry,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 35 (1939): 761–74. 7. On the excerptor, see Luscombe, School of Peter Abelard, 107–8. All that survives of the Liber sententiarum are twenty-five excerpts quoted against Abelard by his opponents ; see Constant J. Mews, “The Sententie of Peter Abelard,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 53 (1986): 159–84, at 174–83. 8. For lists of these sententiae with bibliography, see Marenbon, Philosophy of Peter Abelard, xviii–xix, and Cambridge Companion to Abelard, ed. Brower and Guilfoy, 339. 9. Letter 190, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 8: 17–40, discussed by Mews, Abelard and Heloise , 9–11. of heresy (the capitula) that had been leveled against his theology, in particular as presented in his Theologia “Scholarium” but also in...