Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/145

Rh champion of virtue, had to flee: his victim was supported not only by the sympathy of his disciples and the clergy at large, but even by that of the canons and of the bishop of Paris himself. It was not then Abailard's marriage that set a period to his career as a teacher in Paris; it was the shock of the personal outrage to which he had been subjected and which it was a heavy task to survive. His honour in the city was in fact unimpaired, perhaps augmented: but the thread of his life was broken, He had no longer heart to continue his lessons: he withdrew in bitterness to Saint Denis; his wife found shelter in the convent of Argenteuil.

But Abailard found no rest in the abbey. The disorder, the loose manners, of his fellow-monks turned the religious quiet of the place into an uproar more jarring than the noise of the outer world. Abailard raised his voice in vain against these misdoings; at length he was permitted to remove to a cell in the country of Champagne. He had now rallied from his misery. The pressure of his former scholars roused in him again his old energy. He was once more a teacher, thronged by students of the arts whom it was his ambition to educate to the pursuit of true philosophy, in other words, of theology. He would be another Origen. Theology, however, as he had learned at Laon was a dangerous profession unless the teacher had well authenticated credentials. To established masters, to Alberic of Rheims and Lotulf of Novara, Abailard was an adventurer, all the more sternly to be suppressed because his popularity was draining their schools. They strained every nerve to effect his overthrow. But, to do them justice, it was not mere envy that prompted their opposition. Abailard's was a perilously exciting personality. His nature (this is a principal charge which Otto of Freising makes against him) was too restless to endure subjection to any master. He committed himself to controversy with each in succession, and such was the defiant and contemptuous tenour of his argument that he made enemies of them all. The very qualities which delighted