His knowledge of Hebrew must have been equally, or even more, elementary. Only once does he clearly approach the Hebrew text without patristic guidance; it is when, in answering one (the thirty-sixth) of the famous ‘Problems of Heloise,’ he adduces the authority of ‘a certain Hebrew,’ whom he ‘heard discussing the point.’ In this we have a clear clue to the source of his Hebrew. The Jews were very numerous in Paris in the twelfth century. When Innocent the Second visited Paris in 1131, the Jews met him at St. Denis, and offered him a valuable roll of the law. By the time of Philippe Auguste they are said to have owned two-thirds of the city: perceiving which, Philippe recollected, or was reminded, that they were the murderers of Christ, and so he banished them and retained their goods. Abélard indicates that they took part in the intellectual life of Paris in his day; in Spain they were distinguished in every branch of higher thought; and thus the opportunity of learning Hebrew lay close at hand. One does not see why Rémusat and others should deny him any acquaintance with it. His knowledge, however, must have been elementary. He does not make an impressive, though a novel, use of it in deriving the name of Heloise (Helwide, or Helwise, or Louise) from Elohim, which he does, years afterwards, in the sober solitude of his abbey and the coldness of his mutilation. Add an extensive acquaintance with Scripture and the fathers, and the inventory is complete. Not difficult to be erudite in those days, most people will reflect. Well, a phonogram may be erudite. The gifts of Abélard were of a higher order than industry and memory, though he possessed both. He takes his place in history, apart from the ever-interesting drama and the deep pathos of his life, in virtue of two distinctions. They are, firstly, an extraordinary ability in imparting such knowledge as the poverty of the age afforded—the facts of his career reveal it; and secondly, a mind of such marvellous penetration that it conceived great truths which it has taken humanity seven or eight centuries to see—this will appear as we proceed. It was the former of these gifts that made him, in literal truth, the centre of learned and learning Christendom, the idol of several thousand eager scholars. Nor, finally, were these thousands the ‘horde of barbarians’ that jealous Master Roscelin called them. It has been estimated that a pope, nineteen cardinals, and more than fifty bishops and archbishops, were at one time among his pupils.