Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/188

170 touches the spring of the whole antagonism. It was not really a controversy between faith and error, but between ignorance and learning; and in this way we can understand how it was that the character and position of Gilbert, and nearly to the same extent of Abailard, remained unaffected by the obloquy to which they were exposed. The affair in fact interested only a very few outside the circle of Bernard's intimates. To these denunciation was a point of party honour, but to the rest of the world the proceedings or the results of the councils appear either unknown or else so questionable as to be practically put out of account. The latter alternative, however, hardly accords with the slender mental attainments of the monastic chroniclers who may be taken as reflecting the opinions of the average of churchmen: their notices persuade us that they were simply ignorant that the great names they commemorate had ever encountered, or been overwhelmed by, the storm of religious hatred.

A few specimens will justify this statement. Their selection makes no pretence to an elaborate or critical examination, for all we seek is the popular report that won currency with reference to Abailard and Gilbert. It was usual when the news arrived of a famous man's death to enter it in what we may call the day-book of the monastery, and the epithet attached to the name would be that given to it by common rumour. In process of time these jottings would be dressed by a more ambitious member of the fraternity who would add details and specifications derived from other chronicles which circulated in the religious world of his day: so that though the work itself might be a century or more later than some of the events it relates, its evidence would still be carried back, through its secondary sources and through the acceptance which these latter had obtained, to that popular version of the original facts which we wish to discover.

The summary perhaps most often repeated of Abailard's career is that which appears in the Chronologia of Robert, monk of Saint Marianus at Auxerre, who died in