Peter Abélard

A new age began for Paris and for learning, when Peter Abélard accepted the chair of the episcopal school. It would be a difficult task to measure the influence he had in hasten...

The true interest of the correspondence between the abbot husband and the abbess wife, which resulted from the publication of the ‘Story of my Calamities,’ needs to be pointed o...

The great cemetery of Père Lachaise at Paris is a city of historic tombs. Names of world-fame look down on you from the marble dwellings of the dead, as you pass along its alley...

On the 4th of June 1141, the cathedral at Sens was filled with one of the strangest throngs that ever gathered within its venerable walls. Church and state and the schools had b...

The literary and personal activity described in the preceding chapter, together with the elaboration of a new ‘theology,’ of which we shall read presently, brings the story of A...

If the inquirer into the influence of the famous dialectician could content himself with merely turning from the study of Abélard’s opinions to the towering structure of modern...

If you desire to see the Paris of those early days, imagine yourself beside the spot where the modern Pantheon stands. It is the summit of what Paris called ‘the hill’ for many...

When Abélard and his admirers returned from Melun to Paris, they found William’s new successor sitting resolutely in the chair of Notre Dame. From some manuscripts of the ‘Story...

Abélard had, of course, committed another serious blunder in accepting the proffered ‘dignity.’ There was an error on both sides, as there had been in his first fatal assumption...

Abélard had now entered upon the series of blunders which were to make his life a succession of catastrophes. A stronger man would have retired to Pallet, and remained there unt...

The scene of the next act in Abélard’s dramatic career is a bright, restful valley in the heart of Champagne. It is the summer of 1122, and the limpid Arduzon rolls through ench...

It was well for Bernard’s cause that he succeeded in obtaining the decree without delay. He had carefully represented that the whole of France supported him in his demand. It do...

The abbey of St. Médard, to which Abélard accompanied his friendly jailer, was a very large monastery on the right bank of the Aisne, just outside Soissons. At that time it had...

Peter Abélard was born towards the close of the eleventh century. No other personality that we may choose to study leads to so clear and true an insight into those strange days...

The swiftly multiplying charges seem to have impaired Abélard’s health. He became much more sensitive to the accusation of heresy than the mere injustice of it can explain. We h...