Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/153

Rh Etampes. Still the presentiment of evil was so strong that Abailard meditated escaping altogether from the lands of Christendom and living alone, a blameless outcast. Soon, however, a middle path opened to him. About the year 1125 the abbacy of Saint Gildas de Rhuys in Brittany became vacant: doubtless through his connexion with that country, he was called to assume the office. The invitation furnished the release he was seeking; and he gladly betook himself to the desolate coast, preferring to live among people of barbarous manners and strange speech, rather than to encounter daily suspicion of his beliefs on subjects which were now to him most sacred of all.

For a course of years then, probably six or eight, I incline to the shorter period. Rémusat, vol. 1. 163 n., says that Abailard's departure from Saint Gildas 'fut antérieure àa 1136 et probablecment de plusieurs années.' Elsewhere, p. 139 n., he is disposed to place his removal from Brittany (some time after the final rupture with the monks) in 1134. But it must be borne in mind that the entire correspondence between Abailard and Heloïssa belongs to this interval. The latter first wrote when she had by chance had a sight of Abailard's Historia calamitatum, composed in his retirement after, probably just after, he had quitted Saint Gildas; and we must allow some time for the news to have reached her. Moreover a correspondence of eight letters such as we possess supposes a considerable length of time. The last dates given in the Historia calamitatum are (1) the confirmation of the charter of the Paraclete by Innocent the Second, cap. xiii. p. 31; and this was on the 28th November 1131 (see the instrument, Opp. 1. 719 sq.): and (2) a legation from the pope to enquire at Abailard's request into the abuses at Saint Gildas, which we may reasonably conjecture was arranged during Innocent's visit to Gaul, October 1130-March 1132, and probably at the time, January 1131, when Abailard was in the pope's company at Morigny. Either we must be content to leave a blank interval of four or five years before Abailard reappears on Saint Geneviève, or else suppose him to have endured the intolerable life of Saint Gildas for as many as eight. I think it is more natural to abridge the latter. Let it be noticed that it is only the accident of the existence of the Historia calamitatum that makes the earlier part of his life so full of events, and only the incidental notice of John of Salisbury that commemorates his continued activity in 1136. But for this single mention Abailard's history from the termination of his own narrative to the council of Sens, remains a shadow.