marked his character, and still a stranger to that living piety which he was afterwards enabled in the school of affliction to attain, he soon fell under the influence of those allurements, which, unless restrained and directed by religious principle, lead to folly and guilt. At the mature age of thirty-eight, the renowned philosopher and divine fell in love, and the ardour of his passion corresponded to the attractions of the noble creature who was its object—Heloisa, the niece of Fulbert an ecclesiastic, a young lady under twenty, with a combination of beauty, genius, learning, and goodness, that could not but render her irresistibly attractive to such a man as Abelard. It is usually asserted that Abelard perpetrated premeditated seduction, but such assumption is unwarranted by evidence or probability. Hitherto he had lived a life of comparative innocence and purity, and he evinced the utmost readiness to redress by marriage the wrong he had done. He was not yet in orders. This point seems clearly established by M. Remusat, in his learned and accurate work on the life and writings of Abelard. Strange to say, Heloisa, from an unparalleled combination of generosity and perverted moral and religious sentiment, objected to matrimony, and after the marriage, which was private, denied its existence on oath. It has been justly remarked by Hallam, that Pope, in his beautiful poem, "has done great injustice to the character of Heloisa, by putting into her mouth the sentiments of a coarse and abandoned woman." "Her refusal to marry Abelard," he adds, "arose, not from an abstract predilection for the name of mistress above that of wife, but from her disinterested affection, which would not deprive him of the prospect of ecclesiastical dignities, to which his genius and renown might lead him." Even Hallam's explanation, true as far as it goes, does not fully express the sentiments of Heloisa. Her own singular argumentation on the subject has been preserved, and deserves to be studied in connection with the social and ecclesiastical condition of the age. Not long after their marriage, Abelard and Heloisa assumed the monastic habit, he entering the abbey of St. Denis, and she the convent of Argenteuil. This remarkable step should not be attributed, necessarily and solely, to the consequences of the well-known barbarous outrage perpetrated by Fulbert, which cannot be discussed here. Abelard's own father and mother had, but a few years before, done, by mutual consent, the same thing, bidding adieu to secular life, and spending the remainder of their days in conventual retirement. Such a decision, in fact, for various reasons, was then extremely common. Abelard at different places and periods resumed, with renown, his lectures both philosophical and theological; and nothing could be more suggestive than the fact, that the virulence of his opponents or enemies never made his illicit intercourse with Heloisa matter of reproach, though his marriage would have been universally deemed a depreciating weakness, as well as a bar to preferment.
Guizot, speaking of Abelard's labours, says:—"In this celebrated school were trained one pope (Celestine II.), nineteen cardinals, more than fifty bishops and archbishops, French, English, and German; and a much larger number of those men with whom popes, bishops, and cardinals had often to contend, such as Arnold of Brescia, and many others." Abelard considered himself, and wished to be, orthodox, though his fearless application of philosophy to divinity was not merely fitted to alarm timid and narrow-minded believers, but was such as to lead inevitably to what is called Rationalism, unless kept under the guidance of those restrictive principles which the gospel so clearly points out. At St. Denis, and still more at St. Gildas in Brittany, to which he afterwards retired, Abelard was in constant collision with the monks, whose conceited ignorance and gross debauchery he could not help trying to enlighten and reform. About the year 1120 he commenced a course of lectures in a solitary place on the territory, and under the protection, of the count of Champagne. Here he was soon followed by a crowd of devoted auditors, amounting, it is said, to 3000, who continued to reside in tents and temporary huts. His lectures, as brilliant as ever, now exhibited a far higher tone of spirituality than before, indicating the change that had taken place in his own mind. The spirit of his teaching, and the boldness of his statements, soon brought on him ecclesiastical prosecutions. In 1121 he was condemned without a fair trial, by a council held at Soissons, to burn a dissertation he had published, and which, in spite of all his protestations of orthodoxy, was declared to contain heretical statements in reference to the Trinity. He after this found refuge and temporary repose in the priory of St. Ayoul, at Provins, on the territory of his former protector, the count of Champagne. In 1122 he selected for a retreat a locality near Troyes, where he built a humble oratory, which he dedicated to the Paraclete, or Comforter. Here, again, students crowded to his lectures. He resided at the Paraclete till 1125, during which time the original oratory was superseded by a monastic establishment of considerable size and importance. In 1125, harassed by critics and opponents, and threatened with fresh prosecutions, he accepted the position of abbot of St. Gildas, offered him by the duke of Brittany, and retired to his native province. All this time Heloisa had been in the convent of Argenteuil, and had become its prioress. But in 1127 the priory was claimed by the crown, and the inmates were dispossessed. In 1129, Abelard, ascertaining this catastrophe, hastened from Brittany, and made over to Heloisa the establishment of the Paraclete. Here she spent the rest of her life as abbess. Abelard finally quitted St. Gildas in 1140, reserving the title and rank of abbot. In 1136 he was again delivering lectures in Paris, when John of Salisbury was one of his devoted hearers. Twenty years had nearly elapsed since the council of Soissons. Abelard was now again prosecuted for heresy, with far more vigour and bitterness than before, and, mainly through the influence of St. Bernard, condemned, in a council held at Sens in 1140, to perpetual confinement, and inhibited from writing or teaching. He appealed to the pope, and by the kindly interference of Peter, the venerable abbot of Cluni, the matter was ultimately compromised, and Abelard took up his abode with the abbot, enjoying at Cluni, for two years, more repose and satisfaction of mind than probably he had ever experienced before; and manifesting a growing sense of the consolations of religion. He died in 1142 at St. Marcellus, near Chalons-sur-Saōne, whither he had gone for a change of air. For an account of Heloisa's life as abbess of the Paraclete, and of the touching epistolary correspondence between her and Abelard during that period, see under Heloisa.—E. M.
ABELE, Matthias, a famous doctor of laws, and a count palatine and occupant of some high offices in the Austrian empire, flourished at Lilianberg, during the latter half of the seventeenth century. His brother Christopher, count of Abele, was also a noted jurist; died at Vienna, 1685.
ABELIN, Johann Phillip, a German historian, chiefly known as the founder of the "Theatrum Europæum," an immense compilation in 21 vols., comprising all the contemporary history of Europe. His works are still valuable as references for the history of the seventeenth century. Died 1646.
ABELLI, Antoine, a French ecclesiastic, born at Paris in 1527, was made abbot of the Augustinian monastery of Livry, near Paris. He is the author of three works, the chief of which is "La manière de bien prier." Died about 1600.
ABELLI, Louis, a French theologian, and author of numerous works, born 1603, died 1691, was at one time bishop of Rodez, and was a great adversary of the Port Royalists.
ABEN-BITAR, Abdullah-Ibn-Ahmed, better known as Ibnu-L-Beyttar, an Arabian physician and botanist, was born about the close of the twelfth century; died in 1248. He has written in Arabic on vegetable medicines, and corrects many of the errors of Dioscorides, Galen, and Oribasus.
ABENDANA, Jacob, a Spanish Jew, wrote a Hebrew commentary on some portions of scripture; died in London, 1685.
ABENDANA, Isaac, a brother of the preceding, and a rabbi, wrote in English a "Calendarium Judaicum."
ABENDROTH, Amedeus-Augustus, in 1810 mayor of Hamburg, was born 1767; died 1842. He was the first who instituted establishments of sea-water baths.
ABEN EZRA, or more fully ABRAHAM BEN MEIR ABEN EZRA, was one of the most able and famous Jewish grammarians and commentators of the middle ages. He was born in Toledo, probably in 1119, and died either in Rhodes or in Rome, probably in 1194. To extraordinary natural talents he added indefatigable ardour and industry in the pursuit of knowledge, and he enjoyed besides, in his youth, the advantage of the best teachers; among whom was the Karaite, Japhet Hallevi or Levita, to whom he is believed to have owed his taste for etymological and grammatical investigation, and his preference for the literal to the allegorical and cabbalistical interpretation of scripture. He was afterwards married to Levita's daughter,
