Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/132

114 settled and was made chancellor of the cathedral. After perhaps twenty years of this life he removed to Paris, and gave lectures in dialectics and theology. He did not, however, stay long in the capital, for in 1142 he was raised to the bishoprick of Poitiers. Possibly he was not sorry then to obtain an honourable office in the country, for we are told that d Abailard, when approaching condemnation at the council of Sens, turned to Gilbert with the line of Horace,

Gilbert must therefore have already been pointed at as a fellow-heretic with the victim of Sens. The presage, as the sequel shews, proved true; but it was four years after his preferment that the crisis of his life came. A charge of heresy which was brought against him occupied and perplexed the deliberations of two successive councils; and to this day it is debated whether he was condemned or acquitted [ 1148.]. It will suffice for the present to observe that the visible result of the second council was that the bishop returned untouched to his diocese, where for the few years remaining of his long life he ruled in peace. f He died in 1154. The fact that his alleged offence related to the detail of theological metaphysics takes it out of the atmosphere of that school of which we have attempted to discern the peculiar elements. His theology is a legacy not from the teaching of Bernard of Chartres, but from Anselm of Laon, who, g we know, had suggested, though he did not countenance, at least one of the theses which brought Gilbert into trouble. It is also necessary to bear in mind that the