from human things) I addressed myself to the Peripatetic of
Palais, who then presided upon Mount Saint Genovefa, an
illustrious teacher and admired of all men. There at his
feet I acquired the first rudiments of the dialectical art, and
snatched according to the scant measure of my wits, pro
modulo ingenioli mei, whatever passed his lips with entire
greediness of mind. Then, when he had departed, all too
hastily, as it seemed to me, I joined myself to master Alberic,[1]
who stood forth among the rest as a greatly esteemed dialec
tician, and verily was the bitterest opponent of the nominal
sect. Thus Abailard was for a moment upon the scene of
his early triumphs ; but not now at Paris but near it (as
Paris then was) on the hill of Saint Genevieve. When
John of Salisbury heard him in 1136, he was once more,
at the age of seven-and-fifty, lecturing as he had begun
on dialectics. But his return again to public work doubt
less reawakened the hostility of teachers and churchmen to
which he had previously been exposed. He left his school
to Alberic, and John of Salisbury knew him no more as
a teacher. His successor was a leading advocate of the
logical system which he had spent his life in resisting,
Being thus, John continues, for near two whole years occupied on the Mount I had to my instructors in the dialec-
- ↑ It has been supposed that this Alberic of Rheims, Metalog. i. 5 p. 746 (if, as is probable, the refer- cnce there is to him), was the same person who took the lead in Abailard s prosecution at Soissons in 1121; Brucker, Historia critica Philosophiae 3. 755, Leipzig 1743 quarto; Schaarschmidt p. 71 : and the identification has the colour of support from the terms in which John speaks of him, as though he had signalised himself by his opposition to nominalism, If, however, the facts stated in the Histoire litteraire, 12. 74 sq., are correct, there can be no doubt that Abailard’s assailant is the same Alberic who was made arch- bishop of Bourge.s in 1136 and who is designated on the occasion of his preferment by pope Innocent the Second, as of Rheims, a specifica- tion which also appears in docu- ments of 1128 and 1131. This is also the view taken by Andre Duchesne, In Hist. Calam. not. xxx, Abaci. Opp. 1. 54, ed. Cousin, Alberic died in 1141. John of Salisbury’s teacher on the other hand left Paris in 1137 or 1138 in order to continue his studies at Bologna, and M. Haureau, Histoire de la Philosophic scolastique 1. 430, is certainly right in distin- guishing the two persons. It is likely, though there is no proof, that John’s master is the man whom he entitles, in one of his letters, nr cxliii. Opp. 1. 206, Alberic de Porta Veneris. Schaarschmidt is mistaken in say- ing that John speaks of him as archdeacon of Rheims.
