Peter Abelard (1079–1142), a Breton from Palais, near Nantes, was the most striking manifestation of the new spirit. He was the eldest son of a gentleman of good estate, but he early renounced his inheritance, and devoted himself with extraordinary enthusiasm to study. He first learnt dialectic under Roscelin at Loches, near Tours, and afterwards under William of Champeaux at Paris. [Sidenote: Abelard and his influence.] But his sublime self-confidence and acute sceptical intellect speedily brought him into conflict, both with the novel Nominalism of Roscelin and with the old-fashioned extreme Realism of William of Champeaux. He soon despised and strove to supplant his masters. While William of Champeaux taught with declining authority at the cathedral school, and afterwards in the Abbey of St. Victor, his audacious disciple gathered an opposition band of pupils round him in neighbouring towns, and finally on the hill of Ste. Geneviève, where he became so famous, that William retired in disgust to his bishopric of Châlons. Abelard’s acuteness, rhetorical skill, and attractive personality, soon drew to Paris crowds of students, who gave the city a unique position among the schools of Europe. The Conceptualism, which he perhaps learnt from Aristotle, seemed more scientific than Realism, and less revolutionary than Nominalism. But it is not so much what he taught, as the spirit in which he taught, that gave Abelard his position in history. His method was essentially rationalistic. He based his orthodoxy on its reasonableness. ‘A doctrine is not to be believed,’ he is reported to have said, ‘because God has said it, but because we are convinced by reason that it is so.’ Moved by religious zeal as well as greed for applause, he went to Laon to study theology under Anselm, but very soon came to despise his teacher, whom he denounced as a phrase-monger. ‘Anselm kindled a fire,’ he said, ‘not to give light but to fill the house with smoke.’ He forsook the pretender’s school, and at once proceeded to prove the audacious thesis that a man could learn theology without a master. He was soon back at Paris, where his teaching attracted greater crowds than ever, until the tragic conclusion of his relations with Heloisa drove him to take the monastic vows at Saint-Denis. Even in the cloister he was restless and insubordinate. He published a treatise on the Trinity, which was denounced by the aged Roscelin as savouring of Sabellianism, and burnt at a Council at Soissons in 1121. He left Saint-Denis after rousing the fury of his fellow-monks by demonstrating the unhistorical character of the accredited legend of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, their imaginary founder. After some years spent in his new monastery of the Paraclete in Champagne, Abelard sought absolute retirement as abbot of St. Gildas de Rhuys, in the wildest part of his native Brittany. [Sidenote: Abelard and St. Bernard.] But he fled at last from the savage monks of St.