Yet the assertion involves no strain or ingenuity of interpretation of Catholic theology. The notion that Rome rebukes the imperious claims of reason is one of a number of strangely-enduring fallacies concerning that Church. The truth of our thesis can be swiftly and clearly established. The one essential source of the antagonism of St. Bernard and Abélard was the question of the relations of faith and reason. ‘Faith precedes intellect,’ said the Cistercian; ‘Reason precedes faith,’ said the Benedictine. All other quarrels were secondary and were cognate to their profound and irreconcilable opposition on this point. M. Guizot adds a second fundamental opposition on the ethical side. This, however, was certainly of a secondary importance. Few historians hesitate to regard the famous struggle as being in the main a dispute over the rights and duties of reason. Turn then from the pontificate of Innocent II. to that of Pius IX. and of Leo XIII. Towards the close of the last century, Huet, Bishop of Avranches, began to meet rationalistic attacks with a belittlement of human reason. The idea found favour with a class of apologists. De Bonald, Bonetty, Bautain, and others in France, and the Louvain theologians in Belgium, came entirely to repudiate the interference of reason with regard to higher truths, saying that their acceptance was solely a matter of faith and tradition. Well, the Church of Rome (to which all belonged) descended upon the new sect with a remarkable severity. Phrases that were purely Bernardist in form and substance were rigorously condemned. The French ‘Traditionalists’ were forced to subscribe to (amongst others) the following significant proposition: ‘The use of reason precedes faith, and leads up to it, with the aid of revelation and grace.’ It was the principle which Abélard’s whole life was spent in vindicating. The Louvain men wriggled for many months under the heel of Rome. They were not suffered to rest until they had cast away the last diluted element of their theory.