Whether Abbot Geoffrey thought Abélard an acquisition or no, there was one man in authority at St. Médard who rejoiced with a holy joy at his advent. This was no other than Abélard’s earlier acquaintance, St. Goswin. The zealous student had become a monastic reformer, and had recently been appointed Prior[18] of St. Médard. In the recently reformed abbey, with a daily arrival of ‘obstinate monks to be trained,’ and a convenient and well-appointed ascetical armoury or whipping-room, the young saint was in a congenial element. Great was his interest when ‘Pope Innocent,’[19] as his biographers say, ‘sent Abélard to be confined in the abbey, and, like an untamed rhinoceros, to be caught in the bonds of discipline.’ Abélard was not long in the abbey before the tamer approached this special task that Providence had set him. We can imagine Abélard’s feelings when the obtuse monk took him aside, and exhorted him ‘not to think it a misfortune or an injury that he had been sent there; he was not so much confined in a prison, as protected from the storms of the world.’ He had only to live piously, and set a good example, and all would be well. Abélard was in no mood to see the humour of the situation. He peevishly retorted that ‘there were a good many who talked about piety and did not know what piety was.’ Then the prior, say his biographers, saw that it was not a case for leniency, but for drastic measures. ‘Quite true,’ he replied, ‘there are many who talk about piety, and do not know what it is. But if we find you saying or doing anything that is not pious, we shall show you that we know how to treat its contrary, at all events.’ The saint prevailed once more—in the biography: ‘the rhinoceros was cowed, and became very quiet, more patient under discipline, more fearful of the lash, and of a saner and less raving mind.’ [18] A prior is the second in command in an abbey, or the head of a priory; a priory was a small branch monastery, in those days, though it may now, as with the Dominicans, be a chief house. [19] This is erroneous; Calixtus II. filled the papal chair at the time. Fortunately, the boorish saint had a cultured abbot, one at least who did not hold genius to be a diabolical gift, and whose judgment of character was not wholly vitiated by the crude mystic and monastic ideal of the good people of the period. The abbot seems to have saved Abélard from the zeal of the prior, and possibly he found companionable souls amongst the four hundred monks of the great abbey, some of whom were nobles by birth. We know, at all events, that in the later period he looked back on the few months spent at St. Médard with a kindly feeling.