620 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1204.
seen. He was abstinent in meat and drink. He read con tinually and prayed fervently. Faithfully he had committed his body and soul to his Lord Redeemer for time and eternity. " So Master Peter finished his days and he who was known in almost the whole world for his great erudition and ability as a teacher died peacefully in Him who said 4 Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart,' and he is, as we must be lieve, gone to Him."
Abselard's body was carried to the Paraclete and there given rest. Twenty-two years later, Heloise was laid at his side. The inscription placed over the tomb ran, " The Socrates of the Gauls, the great Plato of the Occidentals, our Aristotle, who was greater or equal to him among the logi cians! Abselard was the prince of the world's scholars, varied in talent, subtle and keen, conquering all things by his mental force. And then he became a conqueror indeed, when, entering Cluny, he passed over to the true philosophy of Christ."1 At a later time the following inscription was placed over the united dust of these remarkable and un fortunate personages, u Under this marble lie the founder of this convent, P. Abielard and the first abbess Heloise, once joined by studies, mind, love, forbidden marriage, — infaustis nuptiis, — and penitence and now, as we hope, in eternal felicity."
At the destruction of the Paraclete during the French Revolution, 1792, the marble sarcophagus was removed to Paris and in 1816 it was transferred to the cemetery of Pere la Chaise. There it remains, the chief object of interest in that solemn place of the dead, attracting Frenchmen and visitors from distant lands who commemorate, with tears of sympathy and a prayer over the mistakes of mortals, the un fortunate lovers.
§ 100. Abcelard's Teachings and Theology.
Furnished with brilliant talents, Abselard stands in the front rank of French public teachers. But he was a creature of impulse and offensively conscious of his own gifts and iMigne, 178. 103.
§ 100. AB^ELARD'S TEACHINGS AND THEOLOGY. 621
acquirements. He lacked the reverent modesty and equilib rium which become greatness. He was deficient in moral force to lift him above the whips and stings of fortune, or rather the calamities of his own making. He seems to have discerned no goal beyond his own selfish ambition. As Neander has said, if he had been a man of pure moral charac ter, he would have accomplished more than he did in the domain of scholarly study. A man of the highest type could not have written his Story of Misfortunes in the tone that Abaelard wrote. He shows not a sign of repentance towards God for his treatment of Heloise. When he recalls that epi sode, it is not to find fault with himself, and it is not to do her any reparation.
His readiness to put himself in opposition to his teachers and to speak contemptuously of them and to find the motive for such opposition in envy, indicates also a lack of the higher moral sentiment. It is his own loss of fame and position that he is continually thinking of, and lamenting. Instead of ascribing his misfortunes to his own mistakes and mistemper, he ascribes them to the rivalry and jealousy of others.1 His one aim in his troubles seems to have been to regain his popularity.
Abselard's writings are dialectic, ethical, and theological treatises, poems and letters to Heloise, and his autobiography. His chief theological works are a Commentary on the Romans, the Introduction to Theology, and a Christian Theology, the last two being mainly concerned with the Trinity, a colloquy between a philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian and the Sic et Non, Yes and No. In the last work the author puts side by side in one hundred and fifty-eight chapters a collection of quotations from the Fathers which seem to be or really
1 The Story of Misfortunes was written while he was abbot of St. Gildas. It has been compared to the Confessions of Augustine. But no comparison could more sadly offend against truth. Abselard revealed his inward states to gain a worldly end. He wanted to draw attention to him self and prepare the way for a new career. His letters to Heloise are not so much to assure her of his orthodoxy as to make that impression upon the Church authorities. This is the position taken by Deutsch, pp. 43 sqq., Hausrath, 275 sqq., and Nitzsch, art. Abcelard, in Herzog.