a sudden revulsion of feeling, a failure of courage or a flash of certainty that the votes of the council were already secured, perhaps that the excited populace would rise against him,[1] — he appealed from that tribunal to the sovereign judgement of the Roman pontiff, and quitted the assembly.
Thus at the close of his life as at every juncture in its progress, Abailard's fortunes turned upon the alternations of his inner mood. He believed his actions to be under the mechanical control of his mind; yet he was really the creature of impulse. At the critical moment, that lofty self-confidence of which he boasted would suddenly desert him and change by a swift transition into the extreme of despondency, of incapacity for action. He fled from the council, which proceeded to condemn his doctrines with as little scruple and as little examination as the council of Soissons,[2] but he never reached Rome. [3] He rested on
- ↑ This last alternative is given by Otto, i. 48 p. 377. 'De iusticia veritus,' say two continuators of Sigebert, the Continuatio Praemonstratensis (Pertz 6. 452), one of the earliest of all our witnesses, and the Appendix 'alterius Roberti' (Bouquet 13. 331 A). Geoffrey tells us however that Abailard 'nec volens resipiscere, nec valens resistere sapientiae et spiritui qui loquebatur' (this too is the version which we find in some of Bernard's letters), had nothing for it but to appeal. He repeats a story that Abailard confessed that for the moment he lost his head: Vit. Bern. v. 14 col. 1122 D.
- ↑ Of neither council are the acts preserved in an official shape. Those of Sens we know from the letters of saint Bernard and from his biographers (Alan repeats from Geoffrey) who make little pretence to impartiality. On the other side we have the Apologetic of Peter Berengar, which is simply the invective of a passionate follower of Abailard: Abael. opp. 2. 771-786, especially pp. 772-776. Otto of Freising's is the account of a disinterested reporter acquainted only with the issue of the affair. I have preferred therefore to relate only the facts common to all our authorities. It is worth noticing that modern Roman catholics are unanimous
- ↑ e
1898, pp. 404-412.] In this particular I follow Bernard's letter just cited, 4, col. 183 c: according to another, however, ep. cccxxxvii. 3, 4, col. 309 F sq., Abailard's opinions had been already condemned the day before he appealed. All the letters printed among Bernard's works which relate to this affair, I cite as his, although a certain number bear the names of the collective prelates assembled at Sens, or of some of them. Bishop Hefele considers, vol. 5. 405 sqq., that they are all of Bernard's composition, though authorised by the persons to whom they are ascribed. [Dr. Deutsch, however, thinks that ep. cccxxxvii is certainly not Bernard's, but probably the production of a clerk of the archbishop of Sens.]
