626 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 104D-1294.
5. Abselard's doctrine of sin likewise presents features of difference from the view current in his time.1 The fall oc curred when Eve resolved to eat the forbidden fruit, that is, after her desire was aroused and before the actual partaking of the fruit.2
The seat of sin is the intention, which is the root, bearing good and bad fruit.3 Desire or concupiscence is not sin. This intention, intentio, is not the simple purpose, say, to kill a man in opposition to killing one without premeditation, but it is the underlying purpose to do right or wrong. In this consciousness of right or wrong lies the guilt. Those who put Christ to death from a feeling that they were doing right, did not sin, or, if they sinned, sinned much less griev ously than if they had resisted their conscience and not put him to death. How then was it that Christ prayed that those who crucified him might be forgiven ? Abeelard answers by saying that the punishment for which forgive ness was asked was temporal in its nature.
The logical deduction from Abselard's premises would have been that no one incurs penalty but those who voluntarily consent to sin. But from this he shrank back. The godless condition of the heathen he painted in darkest colors. He, however, praised the philosophers and ascribed to them a knowledge through the Sibylline books, or otherwise, of the divine unity and even of the Trinity.4 Bernard wrote to Innocent II. that, while Abselard labored to prove Plato a Christian, he proved himself to be a pagan. Liberal as he was in some of his doctrinal views, he was wholly at one with the Church in its insistence upon the efficiency of the sacraments, especially baptism and the Lord's Supper.
Because Abselard stands outside of the theological circle
1 They are set forth more particularly in the ethical treatise Scito le ipsum and the Com. on Romans, especially in an excursus on original sin, appended to chap. V., Migne, pp. 866-874.
2 He thinks the tree whose fruit excited the sexual passions was the vine. Hexaemeron, Migne, p. 777.
3 Com. on Romans, chap. II. 6. Deutsch, pp. 344 sqq., deals at length with Abselard's views on sin.
* Introd. ad Theol, Migne, p. 1008,
§ 101. YOUNGER CONTEMPORARIES OF AB^ELARD. 627
of his day, he will always be one of the most interesting figures of the Middle Ages. His defect was in the lack of moral power. The student often finds himself asking the question, whether his statements were always the genuine expression of convictions. But for this lack of moral force, he might have been the Tertullian of the Middle Ages, whom he is not unlike in dash and original freshness of thought. The African Father, so vigorous in moral power, the Latin Church excludes from the number of the saints on account of his ecclesiastical dissent. Abselard she cannot include on account of moral weakness.1 Had he been willing to suffer and had he not retracted all the errors charged against him, he might have been given a place among the martyrs of thought.2 As it is, his misfortunes arouse our sympathy for human frailties which are common ; his the ology and character do not awaken our admiration.
§101. Younger Contemporaries of Abcelard.
LITERATURE : For Gilbert (Gislebertus) of Poictiers. His Commentaries on Boethius' De trinitate are in Migne, 64. 1255 sqq. The De sexprincipiis, Migne, 188. 1250-1270. For his lif e : GAUFRID OF AUXERRE, Migne, 185. 595 sqq. — OTTOOFFREISING, Degestis Frid., 50-57. — J. OF SALISBURY, Hist, pontif., VIII. — POOLE, in Illustr. of the Hist, of Med. Thought, pp. 167-200. HEFELE, V. 503-508, 520-524. — NEANDER-DEUTSCH, St. Bernard, II. 130-144.
For John of Salisbury, Works in Migne, vols. 190, 199, and J. A. Giles, Oxford, 1848, 5 vols. — Hist, pontificalis romanus, in Hon. German., vol. XX. — Lives by REUTER, Berlin, 1842. — *C. SCHAARSCHMIDT, Joh. Saresbriensis nach Leben und Studien, Schriften und Philosophie, Leip., 1862, and art. in Herzog, IX. 313-319. — Denimuid, Paris, 1873.— SCHUBERT: Staatslehre J. von Sal., Berlin, 1897. — STUBBS, in Study of Med. and Mod. Hist., Lectt. VI., VII. — POOLE, in Illuslr. etc., pp. 201- 226, and Diet, of Natl. Biogr., XXIX. 439-446.
1 Hausrath, pp. 293 sqq., assigns to Abselard a place in the front rank of such martyrs. He justifies him for declining to stand by his conclusions in these words : "It would be unfair to demand that a scholar, who was under the pressure of such circumstances (that is mediaeval ecclesiasticism) , should have the courage of a farm hand, or carry his views to their logical conclu sion like a statesman."
2 Abselard left admiring pupils, some of whom, like Omnibene, wrote books of Sentences based upon their teacher's Theology, and followed his three fold division of faith, the sacraments, and love. See Denifle, Archiv, pp, 613 sqq.