AND

Constant J. Mews

Few relationships in the 12th century have been as contentious as that between Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard. The wide interest in Bernard’s letters during the medieval period ensured that his epistolary treatise on Abelard’s errors (Letter 190), addressed to Pope Innocent II, as well as his numerous letters to cardinals of the curia, warning of Abelard’s influence in the aftermath of the Council of Sens, held on 25 May 1141, were never forgotten.1 In the modern period, Bernard’s hostility towards Abelard has sometimes been interpreted as evidence of the repressive force of religion against the cause of reason or, by his defenders, as supporting a mystical view of religion against one that was more analytic. Certainly there is no doubting Bernard’s capacity for turning vivid prose to devastating effect: We have in 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 has added 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 is not lawful for a man to speak. While he is ready to supply a reason for

1 The key letters of Bernard relating to the confrontation with Abelard are Epp. 187–96, in Sancti Bernardi Opera, 8 vols (, 1957–77) [abbreviated henceforth as SBO], 8, pp. 9–52 and Epp. 330–38 (SBO 8, pp. 266–278). These letters (apart from Ep. 190, the treatise of Bernard, unfortunately untranslated) are translated with a differ- ent numbering by Bruno Scott James, The Letters of Bernard of Clairvaux (New York, 1980). On the arguments in favour of assigning the Council of Sens to the Octave of Pentecost of 1141 (25 May), rather than 1140 (2 June), see Constant J. Mews, “The Council of Sens (1141): Abelard, Bernard, and the Fear of Social Upheaval,” Specu- lum 77 (2002), 342–382, with a detailed bibliography of earlier studies on p. 343, n. 2. Subsequent studies worth mentioning include: John R. Sommerfeldt, Bernard of Clairvaux on the Life of the Mind (New York, 2004); Pietro Zerbi, “Philosophi” e “logici”: un ventennio di incontri e scontri: Soissons, Sens, Cluny, 1121–1141 (Milan, 2002). Wim Verbaal, author of Een middeleeuws drama: het conflict tussen scholing en vorming bij Abaelardus en Bernardus (Kampen, 2002), offers an important perspective on the evolution of judicial procedure at Sens, in “The Council of Sens Reconsidered: Masters, , or Judges?” Church History, 74 (2005), 460–493. 134 constant j. mews

everything, even those which are beyond reason, yet he presumes against reason and against faith.2 This passage succinctly conveys Bernard’s dismissal of Abelard as a theologus, a term that Bernard only uses within his writing in a nega- tive sense, to refer to someone who claimed a false knowledge about the truths of Scripture. Abelard was dangerous because of the extent of his intellectual ambition, his emphasis on reason, which he thought bordered on the irrational and certainly challenged the wisdom of faith. Bernard offers a sharp rhetorical distinction between a scholas- tically trained intellectual, more interested in questioning statements of faith than in the spiritual life itself, and the demands of faith. In the nuanced analysis of Jean Leclercq, the antagonism between Bernard and Abelard was the fruit of what he identified as two distinct systems of schooling in the medieval world, one clerical, defined by the use of authorities, questions, and logical argument, the other monastic and derived from meditating on the Bible, but with an interior psycho- logical dimension.3 Yet there are difficulties with this analysis, not least its failure to deal with the intellectual culture of canons regular, who sought to combine a claustral tradition with the analysis of the schools. It is also difficult to say that Bernard and Abelard typified two distinct strands of , when many different modes of thought and peda- gogy emerged during the medieval period, both within and outside of . Most scholastic texts from the 12th century (includ- ing the writings of Peter Abelard) survive within monastic libraries. The confrontation between Bernard and Abelard certainly testifies to conflict between competing forces within 12th-century France, but it may be inadequate to describe one as monastic, the other as scho-

2 Ep. 190.1 (SBO 8, pp. 17–18): “Habemus in Francia novum de veteri magistro theologum, qui ab ineunte aetate sua in arte dialectica lusit, et nunc in Scripturis sanc- tis insanit. Olim damnata et sopita dogmata, tam sua videlicet quam aliena, suscitare conatur, insuper et nova addit. Qui dum omnium quae sunt in caelo sursum et, quae in terra deorsum, nihil, praeter solum ‘Nescio,’ nescire dignatur, ponit in caelum os suum et scrutatur alta Dei, rediens que ad nos refert verba ineffabilia, quae non licet homini loqui; et dum paratus est de omnibus reddere rationem, etiam quae sunt supra rationem, et contra rationem praesumit, et contra fidem. Quid enim magis contra rationem quam ratione rationem conari transcendere?” 3 Jean Leclercq formulated the influential hypothesis that there were two kinds of schools in the medieval period, monastic and clerical, in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catherine Misrahi, 3rd edn (New York, 1982), pp. 191–202.