Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/155

Rh while retaining his rank as abbat. The following years are filled only with his correspondence with Heloïssa. He is now the director of the fortunes of the Paraclete : he resolves the various problems that arose in respect of ritual and discipline ; his thoughts are absorbed in the details, in the routine of practical religious life ; he seems to have forgotten that he had ever been a master of worldly lore and a teacher to whom all men listened. Yet in fact this period was probably one of great intellectual activity. It seems that he was now engaged in collecting and putting in order his former works, in expanding and digesting the notes and glosses that had once stood him in such good stead at Saint Geneviève or at the Paraclete. It was now, unless the indications deceive us, that he mainly wrote, or at least brought into the form in which we now have it, the treatise on Dialectic, which holds a most important place in the history of learning, as well as that Theologia, distinguished by editors as the Introduction to Theology, which furnished his enemies with a weapon for his final overthrow. Abailard had indeed lost neither the desire nor the power of subduing an audience, and twice again he was found on Saint Genevieve ; twice again he became the centre of the dialectical world. How it was that he recovered his popularity we have no means of knowing, but it is a plausible conjecture that the History of his Misfortunes was written not only with a view to publication, but also with the object of reminding the world of the position which he had once held among teachers, and which he was resolved to hold again. In 1136, when q John of Salisbury began his logical studies, it was to Abailard that he addressed himself; and if we may argue from the description of a keen young student, the master had lost nothing of his hold upon his hearers.

He appeared as a meteor, but soon vanished : his enemies had troubled themselves little about him, so long as he remained in obscurity. For fifteen years they had made no sign; but the mere dread of attack had driven him long