We have inherited
the prejudice without acquiring the abstention, but the Middle Ages
had a clearer sense of comparative values and they could forgive,
or even ignore, the sin of Abelard and Heloise when they could less
easily excuse the sin of spiritual pride or deliberate cruelty.
Moreover, these same Middle Ages believed very earnestly in the
Divine forgiveness of sins for which there had been real repentance
and honest effort at amendment. Abelard and Heloise had been
grievously punished, he himself had made every reparation that was
possible, his penitence was charitably assumed, and therefore it
was not for society to condemn what God would mercifully forgive.
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were not an age of moral
laxity; ideals and standards and conduct were immeasurably higher
than they had been for five hundred years, higher than they were to
be in the centuries that followed the crest of Mediaevalism. It was
however a time of enormous vitality, of throbbing energy that was
constantly bursting its bounds, and as well a time of personal
liberty and freedom of action that would seem strange indeed to us
in these days of endless legal restraint and inhibitions mitigated
by revolt.
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