Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/186

168 that if there was anything in his book repugnant to the formulas, he should emend it in conformity with them, and that submitting to this injunction he was acquitted. Otto of Freising on the other hand relates that owing to the confusion it was impossible to arrive at any decision on the last three points, it being doubtful whether there was any actual divergence of opinion among the parties. The pope however gave his ruling on the first head: he directed that no reasoning in theology should make a division between nature and person, and that the essence of God should be predicated not in the sense of the ablative case only, but also of the nominative. The humour which modern writers have discerned in the closing phrase, an anti-climax not unknown in the proceedings of ecclesiastical councils, did not disturb the gravity of the proceedings. The bishop reverently received the sentence; he took back his archdeacons into favour, and returned with his order untouched and honour unabated to his own diocese.

It is right to add that Bernard and his followers did not own themselves beaten. The former says that Gilbert expressly recanted, and Geoffrey solemnly relates how, when judgement was given, the culprit in fear and trembling, in the hearing of all, renounced with his own mouth those things which he had professed, refuted them severally, and promised for the future not to write or say or even think anything of the sort again. But a curious fact is, that instead of Gilbert's book having been suppressed, it was the formal indictment against him that suffered this fate. The minor charges had been destroyed in public session of the council, and it was perhaps deemed discreet to make away with the rest. At least John of Salisbury states positively that although he remembered hearing the indictment read, he could never find it either