In 1136,
however, we find him once more lecturing, and apparently with much
of his former success, on Mont Ste. Genevieve. His old enemies were
still on his trail, and most of all Bernard of Clairvaux, to whose
fiery adherence to the faith Abelard's rationalism seemed a sheer
desecration. The unceasing activities of Bernard and others finally
brought Abelard before an ecclesiastical council at Sens in 1140,
where he was formally arraigned on charges of heresy. Had Abelard's
courage held good, he might have won his case, for Bernard was
frankly terrified at the prospect of meeting so formidable a
dialectitian, but Abelard, broken in spirit by the prolonged
persecution from which he had suffered, contented himself with
appealing to the Pope. The indefatigable Bernard at once proceeded
to secure a condemnation of Abelard from Rome, whither the accused
man set out to plead his case. On the way, however, he collapsed,
both physically and in spirit, and remained for a few months at the
abbey of Cluny, whence his friends removed him, a dying man, to the
priory of St. Marcel, near Chalons-sur-Saone. Here he died on April
21, 1142.
A discussion of Abelard's position among the scholastic
philosophers would necessarily go far beyond the proper limits of a
mere historical note.
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