Cathédrale de Chartres; Civilization, Medieval; Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)
Fortunately for tourists, the world, restless though it might be,
could not hurry, and Abelard was to know of the pointed arch very
little except its restlessness. Just at the apex of his triumph,
August 1, 1137, Louis-le-Gros died. Six months afterwards the anti-
pope also died, the schism ended, and Innocent II needed Abelard's
help no more. Bernard of Clairvaux became Pope and King at once.
Both Innocent and Louis-le-Jeune were in a manner his personal
creations. The King's brother Henry, next in succession, actually
became a monk at Clairvaux not long afterwards. Even the
architecture told the same story, for at Saint-Denis, though the
arch might simulate a point, the old Romanesque lines still assert
as firmly as ever their spiritual control. The fleche that gave the
facade a new spirit was not added until 1215, which marks Abelard's
error in terms of time.
Once arrived at power, Bernard made short work of all that tried to
resist him. During 1139 he seems to have been too busy or too ill to
take up the affair of Abelard, but in March, 1140, the attack was
opened in a formal letter from William of Saint-Thierry, who was
Bernard's closest friend, bringing charges against Abelard before
Bernard and the Bishop of Chartres. The charges were simple enough:--
Pierre Abelard seized the moment, when all the masters of
ecclesiastical doctrine have disappeared from the scene of the
world, to conquer a place apart, for himself, in the schools, and to
create there an exclusive domination. He treats Holy Scripture as
though it were dialectics. It is a matter with him of personal
invention and annual novelties. He is the censor and not the
disciple of the faith; the corrector and not the imitator of the
authorized masters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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