Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/191

Rh his statement as an authority, whether singly or in combination with the biography of Geoffrey of Clairvaux and the Epistles of Bernard himself: they do not profess to write independently.

To return, however, to the more independent annalists, we find a favourite combination, the very incongruity of which makes no small part of its significance, which grouped together the name of Abailard with that of Hugh of Saint Victor, the master of sacred learning who held a place in the respect of the middle ages, with saint Anselm and saint Bernard, as an immediate successor of the fathers. The juxtaposition would be inexplicable but on the assumption to which we have been already led, namely that piety was an essential ingredient in the popular idea of Abailard. Even more extraordinary is a notice in the Tours chronicle to which reference has been made above, which associates in the same sentence, as the representative churchmen of the age, Bernard of Clairvaux and Gilbert of La Porree. With reference indeed to Gilbert it is not necessary to collect testimony. On the one hand, he had not the European fame of Abailard; on the other. it is agreed that, whatever the issue of the council of Rheims, he left it acquitted or absolved, and lived the rest of his days in honour. But there is one circumstance which we can hardly be wrong in connecting with that council of 1148, and which throws a curious light upon the feelings it should seem to have excited. The notice in the History of the Pontiffs and Counts of Angoulême, a work which dates from a very few years later, may be quoted without comment. On the 15th of June, 1149, the clergy of the city chose for their bishop a certain Hugh of La Rochefoucauld, a man well-trained in the liberal arts, who had attended master Gilbert in Gaul and most of all followed him in theology. That, clearly, was his title to election.

If the religious character of Abailard and Gilbert