Abélard could not repose and ridicule it with impunity. These were the new apostles—‘pseudo-apostles’ Heloise calls them—whom Alberic and Lotulphe now incited to take up the task which they themselves dared pursue no longer. And so, says Abélard, ‘they heaped shameless calumnies on me at every opportunity, and for some time brought much discredit upon me in the eyes of certain ecclesiastical as well as secular dignitaries.’ We shall find that, when Abélard stands before the ecclesiastical tribunal a second time, many of his earlier friends have deserted him, and have fallen under the wide-reaching influence of St. Bernard. But it is strenuously denied by prejudiced admirers of St. Bernard that he had anything to do with Abélard at this period. Father Hefele, for instance, thinks that Abélard is guilty of some chronological confusion in the passage quoted above; looking back on the events of his life, he has unconsciously transferred the later activity of Bernard to the earlier date, not clearly separating it in time from the work of Alberic and Norbert. Unfortunately, the ‘Story of my Calamities’ was written _before_ Bernard commenced his open campaign against Abélard. We shall see later that this is beyond dispute. There is, then, no question of confusion. Mr. Cotter Morison says it is ‘not far short of impossible’ that Bernard showed any active hostility to Abélard at that time, and he thinks the charge springs merely from an over-excited imagination. Mr. Morison is scarcely happier here than in his earlier passage. It must be understood that this reluctance to admit the correctness of Abélard’s complaint is inspired by a passage in one of Bernard’s letters. In writing to William of St. Thierry (ep. cccxxvii. in _Migne_), fifteen years afterwards, he excuses his inaction with regard to Abélard (whose heresies William has put before him) on the ground that he ‘was ignorant of most, indeed nearly all, of these things.’ This is interpreted to mean that he knew little or nothing about Abélard until 1141, and the Abélardists generally give a more or less polite intimation that it is—what Mr. Poole explicitly calls another statement of Bernard’s—a lie. Cotter Morison, however, interprets ‘these things’ to mean ‘the special details of Abélard’s heresy,’ and it is therefore the more strange that he should join the Bernardists in straining the historical evidence. Yet he is probably nearer to the truth than the others in his interpretation of Bernard’s words. Even modern writers are too apt at times to follow the practice of the Church, in judging a statement or an action, and put it into one or other of their rigid objective categories. In such cases as this we need a very careful psychological analysis, and are prone to be misled by the Church’s objective moral boxes or classifications. Most probably Bernard wrote in that convenient vagueness of mind which sometimes helps even a saint out of a