Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

nard, to whom this holy and happy work was due, was everywhere honoured as the peacemaker, and could not make his appearance in public without being escorted by vast processions of men and women. With his usual humility he hastened to escape from these grateful demonstrations, and returning to the still shades of Clairvaux, quietly resumed his exposition of the Canticles. (June, 1138.)

A heavy blow soon afterwards fell upon him in the death of his brother Gerard, whose virtues and graces he has commemorated in a funeral sermon of singular and solemn beauty. "My very heart left me," he exclaimed, "when he was taken away, through whom my meditations in GOD were made free. But I did violence to my mind, and I have dissembled until now, lest it should appear that faith was conquered by emotion. While others wept, I, as you perhaps took note, shed not a tear until he was laid in his grave. Clad in my priestly robes, I pronounced with my lips the usual prayers; with my own hands, according to the usual custom, I cast the earthy dust on the body of my brother, soon itself to be resolved into dust. Those who watched me wept, and wondered why I wept not also, for their pity was less for him than for me, for me who had lost him. But I could not command my grief, though I could control my tears. As it is written: 'I was afflicted, and I kept silence.' But the suppressed anguish struck deeper root within, and has become more bitter, as I perceive, from not being allowed expression."

From domestic sorrows, however, he was called away by the excitement of controversy. Towards the close of the year 1139, his attention was directed to a Compendium of Theology1 recently issued by the celebrated Abelard, the errors in which were thus summed up by William of S. Thierry :-" 1. That he (Abelard) defines faith as the estimation of things not seen. 2. That he declares the names of FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST to be improperly applied to GOD, and that this is a description of the fulness of the Highest Good. 3. That the FATHER is full Power, the SON a certain Power, the HOLY SPIRIT no power. 4. That the HOLY SPIRIT is not the substance of the FATHER and of 1 His "Introductio ad Theologiam."

the SON, as the SON is of the substance of the FATHER. 5. That the HOLY SPIRIT is the soul of the world. 6. That by free will, without the assistance of grace, we can will and act rightly. 7. That CHRIST did not take flesh and suffer, in order to deliver us from subjection to Satan. 8. That CHRIST, GOD and Man, is not the third Person in the Trinity. 9. That in the Sacrament of the Altar, the form of the former substance remains in the air. IO. That diabolical suggestions are made to men through physic. II. That from Adam we do not contract the fault of original sin, but its punishment. 12. That there is no sin, except in consenting unto sin, and in the contempt of GOD. 13. That sin is not committed by concupiscence and delectation and ignorance, and what is thus committed, is not sin, but nature." Bernard occupied himself until the Easter of 1140 in examining these allegations, and came to the conclusion that they endangered the purity of the faith once for all delivered to us by the saints. There was, indeed, between himself and Abelard a direct antithesis. As the latter was the very type of intellectual unrest, so was Bernard the type of intellectual repose. Bernard believed, and was content; Abelard believed, and questioned. Bernard surrendered himself to serene meditation; Abelard was the victim of incessant inquiry. The former considered only what was practical; the latter delighted in speculation. The contrast in their lives had been not less marked than in their characters, for Abelard's had been as stormy, passionate, and irregular as Bernard's had been tranquil, harmonious, and orderly. We can therefore readily understand, (as Canon Robertson remarks,1) that the active and devout churchman was ready to suspect a man so different from himself as the bold, rhetorical schoolman, who rejoiced in paradoxes and hazardous conjectures. "He felt instinctively that there was danger, not so much in this or that individual point of his teaching, as in the general character of a method which seemed likely to imperil the orthodoxy of the Church." It was the natural dread of the dogmatic theologian for the theological speculator and free inquirer.

Bernard, therefore, summoned all his powers, all his 1 Robertson, "History of the Christian Church," v. 117.

energies to denounce the sacrilegious disturber of the Church's peace. He addressed impassioned appeals to the Pope, and Cardinals, against his several monstrous errors and his general hostility to the established faith. He agreed to confront him openly1 at a council which the Archbishop of Sens had summoned to meet in his archiepiscopal city, on the occasion of the translation of the relics of its patronsaint, (Whitsuntide, 1140.) The King of France was present, and a great number of bishops and ecclesiastics; and thither went Abelard with a long retinue of disciples, and Bernard attended only by two or three monks. The two foremost men of the age, the representatives of the two great antagonistic schools of thought, stood face to face, and began that obstinate contention between Religion and Science, which even in our own time has not come to a termination. The first day of the council was occupied in the inspection and adoration of the sacred relics. On the second the question of Abelard's heresies was taken up. The king, girt round by his knights and nobles, and the Archbishop of Sens, attended by his suffragans, in full pontifical pomp, met in S. Stephen's Church. Between the double row of warriors and courtiers, bishops, priests, and monks, the famous scholar strode into the centre of the sacred building. There, opposite to him, in a pulpit, which existed down to the epoch of the French Revolution, stood the Abbot of Clairvaux, the one man whose influence extended over a wider world than his own. He held in his hand the incriminated book of Abelard, and read, or caused to be read, the passages which he had marked as erroneous and dangerous. The reading had scarcely begun when Abelard, discouraged, it is supposed, by the hostile faces around him, or sensible of the overwhelming influence of his adversary, rose suddenly, and to the disappointment and surprise of the audience, appealed to the Pope. Such an appeal, before sentence, was unusual and contrary to the law of the Church; but the bishops remembered the depth of the Papal jealousy, and forbore to excite a prejudice in favour of the appellant by condemning his person. They continued,

At first, however, with reluctance, in the belief that he was no competent antagonist for a skilled dialectitian like Abelard, who had been "a man of war from his youth."

however, to discuss the propositions imputed to him, and fourteen out of the seventeen they pronounced heretical and false.1 This condemnation they reported to the Pope, requesting him to confirm it, and to prohibit Abelard from teaching; and Bernard wrote to the Pope and the Cardinals in similar terms. "His yet unpractised hearers," he says, 66 mere tyros, but newly weaned from the milk of logic, and as yet scarcely capable of receiving even the elements of the faith, he leads into the mysteries of the Holy Trinity, to that which, shrouded in darkness, hides itself from human eyes; and not only in the schools, but in the public places, and in the streets, the Catholic faith, the conception of the Virgin, the sacrament of the Altar, the incomprehensible mystery of the Trinity, are made subjects for disputation, not for the learned alone, but for boys, for ignorant men, and for fools. He has taken measures also for transmitting his poisonous doctrines to posterity, to the injury of all future generations. The faith of the simple-minded is derided; the highest themes are degraded by bold and audacious questions; and our fathers are held up to laughter, and contempt, because they considered it wiser to dismiss these questions than to attempt their solution. There are no bounds to the presumption of human reason; it leaves nothing to faith,

1 Berenger of Poitiers, in his "Apology for Abelard,” draws an amusing satirical picture of the conclave at Sens. It must not, of course, be accepted as even approximating to the truth. He treats Bernard as "a mere idol of the multitude, as a man gifted with a plentiful flow of words, but destitute of liberal culture and of solid abilities; as one who by the solemnity of his manner imposed the tritest truisms on his votaries as if they were profound oracles. He ridicules his reputation for miraculous power; he tells him that his proceedings against Abelard were prompted by a spirit of bigotry, jealousy, and vindictiveness, rendered more odious by his professions of sanctity and charity. Of the opinions imputed to his master, he maintains that some were never held by Abelard, and that the rest, if rightly interpreted, are true and catholic. The book, he says, was brought under consideration at Sens when the bishops had dined, and was read amidst their jests and laughter, while the wine was doing its work on them. Any expression which was above their understanding excited their rage and curses. As the reading went on, one after another became drowsy; and when they were asked whether they condemned his doctrines, they answered in their sleep without being able fully to pronounce their words."-Robertson, History of the Christian Church, v. 119.

and wills that men should not see anything through a glass darkly, but all things face to face. Better had it been for him if, in accordance with the title of his work," (his treatise on Ethics entitled 'Nosce Teipsum,')" he had known himself: for he treats of sin and virtue without moral rectitude; of the sacraments of the Church without faith; of the mystery of the Trinity without simplicity, and without unction."

Abelard found no favour at Rome. At Lyons, when on his way thither, he was met with the information that Innocent, without waiting for his defence, had condemned him absolutely, and sentenced him to seclusion in a monastery. In this sore strait he found a good Samaritan in the person of Peter, Abbot of Cluny, who, while he abhorred Abelard's heresies, admired his genius, respected his frankness, and pitied his misfortunes. He offered him an asylum at Cluny, which was gladly accepted; and there, with the sanction of the Pope, Abelard spent the few remaining years of his stormy life in repose. Through the good offices of the Abbots of Cluny and Citeaux he was reconciled to Bernard, and in a confession which he drew up, he expressed his acceptance of the Catholic faith, and disowned some of the doctrines imputed to him, "the words in part, and the meaning altogether." He died in 1142.

An eloquent writer, referring to Bernard's various works, pronounces him to be one of the great active minds of his age; commanding kings, compelling nations, swaying the minds of all with whom he came in contact; in a word, one of the statesmen of history. And certain it is that, had he never lived, the twelfth century, so far as we can judge, would have assumed a totally different aspect. It is now the fashion with the modern philosophical school to underrate the influence of a great man upon his age; yet the reality and extent of that influence is demonstrated by history itself. No doubt the power of a great man largely consists in this, that he represents and embodies the tendencies, intellectual and moral, of his time, and is its exponent as well as its director. Such was the case with S. Bernard, in whom we see the highest manifestation of the great need of the twelfth century, the need of a higher spiritual life, the need of a profounder recognition of the unstability of things human and the perma

« AnteriorContinuar »