There are times when example is better than precept for stirring or soothing human feelings; and so I propose to follow up the words of consolation I gave you in person with the history of my own misfortunes, hoping thereby to give you comfort in absence. In comparison with my trials you will see that your own are nothing, or only slight, and will find them easier to bear.1
I was born on the borders of Brittany, about eight miles I think to the east of Nantes, in a town called Le Pallet.2 I owe my volatile temperament to my native soil and ancestry and also my natural ability for learning. My father had acquired some knowledge of letters before he was a knight, and later on his passion for learning was such that he intended all his sons to have instruction in letters before they were trained to arms. His purpose was fulfilled. I was his first-born,3 and being specially dear to him had the greatest care taken over my education. For my part, the more rapid and easy my progress in my studies, the more eagerly I applied myself, until I was so carried away by my love of learning that I renounced the glory of a military life, made over my inheritance and rights of the eldest son to my brothers, and withdrew from the court of Mars in order to be educated in the lap of Minerva.4 I preferred the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosophy, and armed with these I chose the conflicts of disputation instead of the trophies of war. I began to travel about in several provinces disputing, like a true peripatetic philosopher, wherever I had heard there was keen interest in the art of dialectic.5
At last I came to Paris, where dialectic had long been particularly flourishing, and joined William of Champeaux6 who at the time was the supreme master of the subject, both in reputation and in fact. I stayed in his school for a time, but though he welcomed me at first he soon took a violent dislike to me because I set out to refute some of his arguments and frequently reasoned against him. On several occasions I proved myself his superior in debate. Those who were considered the leaders among my fellow-students were also annoyed, and the more so as they looked on me as the youngest and most recent pupil. This was the beginning of the misfortunes which have dogged me to this day, and as my reputation grew, so other men’s jealousy was aroused.
It ended by my setting my heart on founding a school of my own, young as I was and estimating my capacities too highly for my years; and I had my eye on a site suited to my purpose – Melun, an important town at that time and a royal residence.7 My master suspected my intentions, and in an attempt to remove my school as far as possible from his own, before I could leave him he secretly used every means he could to thwart my plans and keep me from the place I had chosen. But among the powers in the land he had several enemies, and these men helped me to obtain my desire. I also won considerable support simply through his unconcealed jealousy. Thus my school had its start and my reputation for dialectic began to spread, with the result that the fame of my old fellow-students and even that of the master himself gradually declined and came to an end. Consequently my self-confidence rose still higher, and I made haste to transfer my school to Corbeil, a town nearer Paris, where I could embarrass him through more frequent encounters in disputation.
However, I was not there long before I fell ill through overwork and was obliged to return home. For some years, being remote from France,8 I was sought out more ardently by those eager for instruction in dialectic. A few years later, when I had long since recovered my health, my teacher William, archdeacon of Paris, changed his former status and joined the order of the Canons Regular,9 with the intention, it was said, of gaining promotion to a higher prelacy through a reputation for increased piety. He was soon successful when he was made bishop of Châlons. But this change in his way of life did not oblige him either to leave Paris or to give up his study of philosophy, and he soon resumed his public teaching in his usual manner in the very monastery to which he had retired to follow the religious life. I returned to him to hear his lectures on rhetoric, and in the course of our philosophic disputes I produced a sequence of clear logical arguments to make him amend, or rather abandon, his previous attitude to universals. He had maintained that in the common existence of universals, the whole species was essentially the same in each of its individuals, and among these there was no essential difference, but only variety due to multiplicity of accidents. Now he modified his view in order to say that it was the same not in essence but through non-difference.10 This has always been the dialectician’s chief problem concerning universals, so much so that even Porphyry did not venture to settle it when he deals with universals in his Isagoge,11 but only mentioned it as a ‘very serious difficulty’. Consequently, when William had modified or rather been forced to give up his original position, his lectures fell into such contempt that he was scarcely accepted on any other points of dialectic, as if the whole subject rested solely on the question of universals.
My own teaching gained so much prestige and authority from this that the strongest supporters of my master who had hitherto been the most violent among my attackers now flocked to join my school. Even William’s successor12 as head of the Paris school offered me his chair so that he could join the others as my pupil, in the place where his master and mine had won fame. Within a few days of my taking over the teaching of dialectic, William was eaten up with jealousy and consumed with anger to an extent it is difficult to convey, and, being unable to control the violence of his resentment for long, he made another artful attempt to banish me. I had done nothing to justify his acting openly against me, so he launched an infamous attack on the man who had put me in his chair, in order to remove the school from him and put it in the hands of one of my rivals. I then returned to Melun and set up my school there as before; and the more his jealousy pursued me, the more widely my reputation spread, for, as the poet says:
Envy seeks the heights, the winds sweep the summits.13
But not long after when he heard that there was considerable doubt about his piety amongst the majority of thoughtful men, and a good deal of gossip about his conversion, as it had not led to his departure from Paris, he removed himself and his little community, along with his school, to a village some distance from the city. I promptly returned to Paris from Melun, hoping for peace henceforth from him, but since he had filled my place there, as I said, by one of my rivals, I took my school outside the city to Mont-Sainte-Geneviève,14 and set up camp there in order to lay siege to my usurper. The news brought William back to Paris in unseemly haste to restore such scholars as remained to him and his community to their former monastery, apparently to deliver from my siege the knight whom he had abandoned. But his good intentions did the man very serious harm. He had previously had a few pupils of a sort, largely because of his lectures on Priscian,15 for which he had some reputation, but as soon as his master arrived he lost them all and had to retire from keeping a school. Soon afterwards he appeared to lose hope of future worldly fame, and he too was converted to the monastic life. The bouts of argument which followed William’s return to the city between my pupils and him and his followers, and the successes in these battles which fortune gave my people (myself among them) are facts which you have long known. And I shall not go too far if I boldly say with Ajax that
If you demand the issue of this fight,
I was not vanquished by my enemy.16
Should I keep silence, the facts cry out and tell the outcome.
Meanwhile my dearest mother Lucie begged me to return home, for after my father Berengar’s entry into monastic life she was preparing to do the same. When she had done so I returned to France, with the special purpose of studying divinity, to find my master William (whom I have often mentioned) already installed as bishop of Châlons. However, in this field his own master, Anselm of Laon,17 was then the greatest authority because of his great age.
I therefore approached this old man, who owed his reputation more to long practice than to intelligence or memory. Anyone who knocked at his door to seek an answer to some question went away more uncertain than he came. Anselm could win the admiration of an audience, but he was useless when put to the question. He had a remarkable command of words but their meaning was worthless and devoid of all sense. The fire he kindled filled his house with smoke but did not light it up; he was a tree in full leaf which could be seen from afar, but on closer and more careful inspection proved to be barren. I had come to this tree to gather fruit, but I found it was the fig tree which the Lord cursed, or the ancient oak to which Lucan compares Pompey:
There stands the shadow of a noble name,
Like a tall oak in a field of corn.18
Once I discovered this I did not lie idle in his shade for long. My attendance at his lectures gradually became more and more irregular, to the annoyance of some of his leading pupils, who took it as a sign of contempt for so great a master. They began secretly to turn him against me, until their base insinuations succeeded in rousing his jealousy. One day it happened that after a session of Sentences19 we students were joking amongst ourselves, when someone rounded on me and asked what I thought of the reading of the Holy Scriptures, when I had hitherto studied only philosophy. I replied that concentration on such reading was most beneficial for the salvation of the soul, but that I found it most surprising that for educated men the writings or glosses of the Fathers themselves were not sufficient for interpreting their commentaries without further instruction. There was general laughter, and I was asked by many of those present if I could or would venture to tackle this myself. I said I was ready to try if they wished. Still laughing, they shouted ‘Right, that’s settled! Take some commentary on a little-known text and we’ll test what you say.’ Then they all agreed on an extremely obscure prophecy of Ezekiel. I took the commentary and promptly invited them all to hear my interpretation the very next day. They then pressed unwanted advice on me, telling me not to hurry over something so important but to remember my inexperience and give longer thought to working out and confirming my exposition. I replied indignantly that it was not my custom to benefit by practice, but I relied on my own intelligence, and either they must come to my lecture at the time of my choosing or I should abandon it altogether.
At my first lecture there were certainly not many people present, for everyone thought it absurd that I could attempt this so soon, when up to now I had made no study at all of the Scriptures. But all those who came approved, so that they commended the lecture warmly, and urged me to comment on the text on the same lines as my lecture. The news brought people who had missed my first lecture flocking to the second and third ones, all alike most eager to make copies of the glosses which I had begun with on the first day.
Anselm was now wildly jealous, and being already set against me by the suggestions of some of his pupils, as I said before, he began to attack me for lecturing on the Scriptures in the same way as my master William had done previously over philosophy. There were at this time two outstanding students in the old man’s school, Alberic of Rheims and Lotulf of Lombardy,20 whose hostility to me was intensified by the good opinion they had of themselves. It was largely through their insinuations, as was afterwards proved, that Anselm lost his head and curtly forbade me to continue my work of interpretation in the place where he taught,21 on the pretext that any mistake which I might write down through lack of training in the subject would be attributed to him. When this reached the ears of the students, their indignation knew no bounds – this was an act of sheer spite and calumny, such as had never been directed at anyone before; but the more open it was, the more it brought me renown, and through persecution my fame increased.
A few days after this I returned to Paris, to the school which had long ago been intended for and offered to me,22 and from which I had been expelled at the start. I remained in possession there in peace for several years, and as soon as I began my course of teaching I set myself to complete the commentaries on Ezekiel which I had started at Laon. These proved so popular with their readers that they judged my reputation to stand as high for my interpretation of the Scriptures as it had previously done for philosophy. The numbers in the school increased enormously as the students gathered there eager for instruction in both subjects, and the wealth and fame this brought me must be well known to you.
But success always puffs up fools with pride, and worldly security weakens the spirit’s resolution and easily destroys it through carnal temptations. I began to think myself the only philosopher in the world, with nothing to fear from anyone, and so I yielded to the lusts of the flesh. Hitherto I had been entirely continent, but now the further I advanced in philosophy and theology, the further I fell behind the philosophers and holy Fathers in the impurity of my life. It is well known that the philosophers, and still more the Fathers, by which is meant those who have devoted themselves to the teachings of Holy Scripture, were especially glorified by their chastity. Since therefore I was wholly enslaved to pride and lechery, God’s grace provided a remedy for both these evils, though not one of my choosing: first for my lechery by depriving me of those organs with which I practised it, and then for the pride which had grown in me through my learning – for in the words of the Apostle, ‘Knowledge breeds conceit’ – when I was humiliated by the burning of the book23 of which I was so proud.
The true story of both these episodes I now want you to know from the facts, in their proper order, instead of from hearsay. I had always held myself aloof from unclean association with prostitutes, and constant application to my studies had prevented me from frequenting the society of gentlewomen: indeed, I knew little of the secular way of life. Perverse Fortune flattered me, as the saying goes, and found an easy way to bring me toppling down from my pedestal, or rather, despite my overbearing pride and heedlessness of the grace granted me, God’s compassion claimed me humbled for Himself.
There was in Paris at the time a young girl named Heloise,24 the niece of Fulbert, one of the canons, and so much loved by him that he had done everything in his power to advance her education in letters. In looks she did not rank lowest, while in the extent of her learning she stood supreme. A gift for letters is so rare in women that it added greatly to her charm and had made her most renowned throughout the realm. I considered all the usual attractions for a lover and decided she was the one to bring to my bed, confident that I should have an easy success; for at that time I had youth and exceptional good looks as well as my great reputation to recommend me, and feared no rebuff from any woman I might choose to honour with my love. Knowing the girl’s knowledge and love of letters I thought she would be all the more ready to consent, and that even when separated we could enjoy each other’s presence by exchange of written messages in which we could write many things more audaciously than we could say them, and so need never lack the pleasures of conversation.
All on fire with desire for this girl I sought an opportunity of getting to know her through private daily meetings and so more easily winning her over; and with this end in view I came to an arrangement with her uncle, with the help of some of his friends, whereby he should take me into his house, which was very near my school, for whatever sum he liked to ask. As a pretext I said that my household cares were hindering my studies and the expense was more than I could afford. Fulbert dearly loved money, and was moreover always ambitious to further his niece’s education in letters, two weaknesses which made it easy for me to gain his consent and obtain my desire: he was all eagerness for my money and confident that his niece would profit from my teaching. This led him to make an urgent request which furthered my love and fell in with my wishes more than I had dared to hope; he gave me complete charge over the girl, so that I could devote all the leisure time left me by my school to teaching her by day and night, and if I found her idle I was to punish her severely. I was amazed by his simplicity – if he had entrusted a tender lamb to a ravening wolf it would not have surprised me more. In handing her over to me to punish as well as to teach, what else was he doing but giving me complete freedom to realize my desires, and providing an opportunity, even if I did not make use of it, for me to bend her to my will by threats and blows if persuasion failed? But there were two special reasons for his freedom from base suspicion: his love for his niece and my previous reputation for continence.
Need I say more? We were united, first under one roof, then in heart; and so with our lessons as a pretext we abandoned ourselves entirely to love. Her studies allowed us to withdraw in private, as love desired, and then with our books open before us, more words of love than of our reading passed between us, and more kissing than teaching. My hands strayed oftener to her bosom than to the pages; love drew our eyes to look on each other more than reading kept them on our texts. To avert suspicion I sometimes struck her, but these blows were prompted by love and tender feeling rather than anger and irritation, and were sweeter than any balm could be. In short, our desires left no stage of lovemaking untried, and if love could devise something new, we welcomed it. We entered on each joy the more eagerly for our previous inexperience, and were the less easily sated.
Now the more I was taken up with these pleasures, the less time I could give to philosophy and the less attention I paid to my school. It was utterly boring for me to have to go to the school, and equally wearisome to remain there and to spend my days on study when my nights were sleepless with lovemaking. As my interest and concentration flagged, my lectures lacked all inspiration and were merely repetitive; I could do no more than repeat what had been said long ago, and when inspiration did come to me, it was for writing love songs, not the secrets of philosophy. A lot of these songs, as you know, are still popular and sung in many places,25 particularly by those who enjoy the kind of life I led. But the grief and sorrow and laments of my students when they realized my preoccupation, or rather, distraction of mind are hard to realize. Few could have failed to notice something so obvious, in fact no one, I fancy, except the man whose honour was most involved – Heloise’s uncle. Several people tried on more than one occasion to draw his attention to it, but he would not believe them; because, as I said, of his boundless love for his niece and my well-known reputation for chastity in my previous life. We do not easily think ill of those whom we love most, and the taint of suspicion cannot exist along with warm affection. Hence the remark of St Jerome in his letter to Sabinian: ‘We are always the last to learn of evil in our own home, and the faults of our wife and children may be the talk of the town but do not reach our ears.’26
But what is last to be learned is somehow learned eventually, and common knowledge cannot easily be hidden from one individual. Several months passed and then this happened in our case. Imagine the uncle’s grief at the discovery, and the lovers’ grief too at being separated! How I blushed with shame and contrition for the girl’s plight, and what sorrow she suffered at the thought of my disgrace! All our laments were for one another’s troubles, and our distress was for each other, not for ourselves. Separation drew our hearts still closer while frustration inflamed our passion even more; then we became more abandoned as we lost all sense of shame and, indeed, shame diminished as we found more opportunities for lovemaking. And so we were caught in the act as the poet says happened to Mars and Venus.27 Soon afterwards the girl found that she was pregnant, and immediately wrote me a letter full of rejoicing to ask what I thought she should do. One night then, when her uncle was away from home, I removed her secretly from his house, as we had planned, and sent her straight to my own country. There she stayed with my sister until she gave birth to a boy, whom she called Astralabe.28
On his return her uncle went almost out of his mind – one could appreciate only by experience his transports of grief and mortification. What action could he take against me? What traps could he set? He did not know. If he killed me or did me personal injury, there was the danger that his beloved niece might suffer for it in my country. It was useless to try to seize me or confine me anywhere against my will, especially as I was very much on guard against this very thing, knowing that he would not hesitate to assault me if he had the courage or the means.
In the end I took pity on his boundless misery and went to him, accusing myself of the deceit love had made me commit as if it were the basest treachery. I begged his forgiveness and promised to make any amends he might think fit. I protested that I had done nothing unusual in the eyes of anyone who had known the power of love, and recalled how since the beginning of the human race women had brought the noblest men to ruin. Moreover, to conciliate him further, I offered him satisfaction in a form he could never have hoped for: I would marry the girl I had wronged. All I stipulated was that the marriage should be kept secret so as not to damage my reputation.29 He agreed, pledged his word and that of his supporters, and sealed the reconciliation I desired with a kiss. But his intention was to make it easier to betray me.
I set off at once for Brittany and brought back my friend to make her my wife. But she was strongly opposed to the proposal, and argued hotly against it for two reasons: the risk involved and the disgrace to myself. She swore that no satisfaction could ever appease her uncle, as we subsequently found out. What honour could she win, she protested, from a marriage which would dishonour me and humiliate us both? The world would justly exact punishment from her if she removed such a light from its midst. Think of the curses, the loss to the Church and grief of philosophers which would greet such a marriage! Nature had created me for all mankind – it would be a sorry scandal if I should bind myself to a single woman and submit to such base servitude. She absolutely rejected this marriage; it would be nothing but a disgrace and a burden to me. Along with the loss to my reputation she put before me the difficulties of marriage, which the apostle Paul exhorts us to avoid when he says: ‘Has your marriage been dissolved? Do not seek a wife. If, however, you do marry, there is nothing wrong in it; and if a virgin marries, she has done no wrong. But those who marry will have pain and grief in this bodily life, and my aim is to spare you.’ And again: ‘I want you to be free from anxious care.’30
But if I would accept neither the advice of the Apostle nor the exhortations of the Fathers on the heavy yoke of marriage, at least, she argued, I could listen to the philosophers, and pay regard to what had been written by them or concerning them on this subject – as for the most part the Fathers too have carefully done when they wish to rebuke us. For example, St Jerome in the first book of his Against Jovinian recalls how Theophrastus sets out in considerable detail the unbearable annoyances of marriage and its endless anxieties, in order to prove by the clearest possible arguments that a man should not take a wife; and he brings his reasoning from the exhortations of the philosophers to this conclusion: ‘Can any Christian hear Theophrastus argue in this way without a blush?’ In the same book Jerome goes on to say that ‘After Cicero had divorced Terentia and was asked by Hirtius to marry his sister he firmly refused to do so, on the grounds that he could not devote his attention to a wife and philosophy alike. He does not simply say “devote attention”, but adds “alike”, not wishing to do anything which would be a rival to his study of philosophy.’31
But apart from the hindrances to such philosophic study, consider, she said, the true conditions for a dignified way of life. What harmony can there be between pupils and nursemaids, desks and cradles, books or tablets and distaffs, pen or stylus and spindles? Who can concentrate on thoughts of Scripture or philosophy and be able to endure babies crying, nurses soothing them with lullabies, and all the noisy coming and going of men and women about the house? Will he put up with the constant muddle and squalor which small children bring into the home? The wealthy can do so, you will say, for their mansions and large houses can provide privacy and, being rich, they do not have to count the cost nor be tormented by daily cares. But philosophers lead a very different life from rich men, and those who are concerned with wealth or are involved in mundane matters will not have time for the claims of Scripture or philosophy. Consequently, the great philosophers of the past have despised the world, not renouncing it so much as escaping from it, and have denied themselves every pleasure so as to find peace in the arms of philosophy alone. The greatest of them, Seneca, gives this advice to Lucilius: ‘Philosophy is not a subject for idle moments. We must neglect everything else and concentrate on this, for no time is long enough for it. Put it aside for a moment, and you might as well give it up, for once interrupted it will not remain. We must resist all other occupations, not merely dispose of them but reject them.’32
This is the practice today through love of God of those among us who truly deserve the name of monks,33 as it was of distinguished philosophers amongst the pagans in their pursuit of philosophy. For in every people, pagan, Jew or Christian, some men have always stood out for their faith or upright way of life, and have cut themselves off from their fellows because of their singular chastity or austerity. Amongst the Jews in times past there were the Nazirites,34 who dedicated themselves to the Lord according to the Law, and the sons of the prophets, followers of Elijah or Elisha, whom the Old Testament calls monks, as St Jerome bears witness;35 and in more recent times the three sects of philosophers described by Josephus in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities, the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes.36 Today we have the monks who imitate either the communal life of the apostles or the earlier, solitary life of John. Among the pagans, as I said, are the philosophers: for the name of wisdom or philosophy used to be applied not so much to acquisition of learning as to a religious way of life, as we learn from the first use of the word itself and from the testimony of the saints themselves. And so St Augustine, in the eighth book of his City of God, distinguishes between types of philosopher:
The Italian school was founded by Pythagoras of Samos, who is said to have been the first to use the term philosophy; before him men were called ‘sages’ if they seemed outstanding for some praiseworthy manner of life. But when Pythagoras was asked his profession, he replied that he was a philosopher, meaning a devotee or lover of wisdom, for he thought it too presumptuous to call himself a sage.37
So the phrase ‘if they seemed outstanding for some praiseworthy manner of life’ clearly proves that the sages of the pagans, that is, the philosophers, were so called as a tribute to their way of life, not to their learning. There is no need for me to give examples of their chaste and sober lives – I should seem to be teaching Minerva herself. But if pagans and laymen could live in this way, though bound by no profession of religion, is there not a greater obligation on you, as clerk and canon, not to put base pleasures before your sacred duties, and to guard against being sucked down headlong into this Charybdis,38 there to lose all sense of shame and be plunged forever into a whirlpool of impurity? If you take no thought for the privilege of a clerk, you can at least uphold the dignity of the philosopher, and let a love of propriety curb your shamelessness if the reverence due to God means nothing to you. Remember Socrates’ marriage and the sordid episode whereby he did at least remove the slur it cast on philosophy by providing an example to be a warning to his successors. This too was noted by Jerome, when he tells this tale of Socrates in the first book of his Against Jovinian: ‘One day after he had withstood an endless stream of invective which Xanthippe poured out from a window above his head, he felt himself soaked with dirty water. All he did was to wipe his head and say: “I knew that thunderstorm would lead to rain.”’39
Heloise went on to the risks I should run in bringing her back, and argued that the name of friend [amica] instead of wife would be dearer to her and more honourable for me – only love freely given should keep me for her, not the constriction of a marriage tie, and if we had to be parted for a time, we should find the joy of being together all the sweeter the rarer our meetings were. But at last she saw that her attempts to persuade or dissuade me were making no impression on my foolish obstinacy, and she could not bear to offend me; so amidst deep sighs and tears she ended in these words: ‘We shall both be destroyed. All that is left us is suffering as great as our love has been.’ In this, as the whole world knows, she showed herself a true prophet.
And so when our baby son was born we entrusted him to my sister’s care and returned secretly to Paris. A few days later, after a night’s private vigil of prayer in a certain church, at dawn we were joined in matrimony in the presence of Fulbert and some of his, and our, friends. Afterwards we parted secretly and went our ways unobserved. Subsequently our meetings were few and furtive, in order to conceal as far as possible what we had done. But Fulbert and his household, seeking satisfaction for the dishonour done to him, began to spread the news of the marriage and break the promise of secrecy they had given me. Heloise cursed them and swore that there was no truth in this, and in his exasperation Fulbert heaped abuse on her on several occasions. As soon as I discovered this I removed her to a convent of nuns in the town near Paris called Argenteuil, where she had been brought up and educated as a small girl, and I also had made for her a religious habit of the type worn by novices, with the exception of the veil, and made her put it on.40
At this news her uncle and his kinsmen and followers imagined that I had tricked them, and had found an easy way of ridding myself of Heloise by making her a nun. Wild with indignation they swore an oath against me, and one night as I slept peacefully in an inner room in my lodgings, they bribed one of my servants to admit them, and there they punished me with a most cruel and shameful vengeance of such appalling barbarity as to shock the whole world; they cut off the parts of my body whereby I had committed the wrong of which they complained. Then they fled, but the two who could be caught were blinded and castrated as I had been, one of them being the servant who had been led by greed while in my service to betray his master.
Next morning the whole city gathered before my house, and the scene of horror and amazement, mingled with lamentations, cries and groans which exasperated and distressed me, is difficult, no, impossible, to describe. In particular, the clerks and, most of all, my pupils tormented me with their unbearable weeping and wailing until I suffered more from their sympathy than from the pain of my wound, and felt the misery of my mutiliation less than my shame and humiliation.41 All sorts of thoughts filled my mind – how brightly my reputation had shone, and now how easily in an evil moment it had been dimmed or rather completely blotted out; how just a judgement of God had struck me in the parts of the body with which I had sinned, and how just a reprisal had been taken by the very man I had myself betrayed. I thought how my rivals would exult over my fitting punishment, how this bitter blow would bring lasting grief and misery to my friends and parents, and how fast the news of this unheard-of disgrace would spread over the whole world. What road could I take now? How could I show my face in public, to be pointed at by every finger, derided by every tongue, a monstrous spectacle to all I met? I was also appalled to remember that according to the cruel letter of the Law, a eunuch is such an abomination to the Lord that men made eunuchs by the amputation or mutilation of their members are forbidden to enter a church as if they were stinking and unclean, and even animals in that state are rejected for sacrifice. ‘Ye shall not present to the Lord any animal if its testicles have been bruised or crushed, torn or cut.’ ‘No man whose testicles have been crushed or whose organ has been severed shall become a member of the assembly of the Lord.’42
I admit that it was shame and confusion in my remorse and misery rather than any devout wish for conversion which brought me to seek shelter in a monastery cloister. Heloise had already agreed to take the veil in obedience to my wishes and entered a convent. So we both put on the religious habit, I in the abbey of St Denis,43 and she in the convent of Argenteuil which I spoke of before. There were many people, I remember, who in pity for her youth tried to dissuade her from submitting to the yoke of monastic rule as a penance too hard to bear, but all in vain; she broke out as best she could through her tears and sobs into Cornelia’s famous lament:
O noble husband,
Too great for me to wed, was it my fate
To bend that lofty head? What prompted me
To marry you and bring about your fall?
Now claim your due, and see me gladly pay …44
So saying she hurried to the altar, quickly took up the veil blessed by the bishop and publicly bound herself to the religious life.
I had still scarcely recovered from my wound when the clerks came thronging round to pester the abbot and myself with repeated demands that I should now for love of God continue the studies which hitherto I had pursued only in desire for wealth and fame. They urged me to consider that the talent entrusted to me by God would be required of me with interest;45 that instead of addressing myself to the rich as before I should devote myself to educating the poor, and recognize that the hand of the Lord had touched me for the express purpose of freeing me from the temptations of the flesh and the distractions of the world so that I could devote myself to learning, and thereby prove myself a true philosopher not of the world but of God.
But the abbey to which I had withdrawn was completely worldly and depraved, with an abbot whose pre-eminent position was matched by his evil living and notorious reputation. On several occasions I spoke out boldly in criticism of their intolerably foul practices, both in private and in public, and made myself such a burden and nuisance to them all that they gladly seized on the daily importunities of my pupils as a pretext for having me removed from their midst. As pressure continued for some time and these demands became insistent, my abbot and the monks intervened, and I retired to a cell46 where I could devote myself to teaching as before; and there my pupils gathered in crowds until there were too many for the place to hold or the land to support.
I applied myself mainly to study of the Scriptures as being more suitable to my present calling, but I did not wholly abandon the instruction in the profane arts in which I was better practised and which was most expected of me. In fact I used it as a hook, baited with a taste of philosophy, to draw my listeners towards the study of the true philosophy – the practice of the greatest of Christian philosophers, Origen, as recorded by Eusebius in his History of the Christian Church.47 When it became apparent that God had granted me the gift for interpreting the Scriptures as well as secular literature, the numbers in my school began to increase for both subjects, while elsewhere they diminished rapidly. This roused the envy and hatred of the other heads of schools against me; they set out to disparage me in whatever way they could, and two of them48 especially were always attacking me behind my back for occupying myself with secular literature49 in a manner totally unsuitable to my monastic calling, and for presuming to set up as a teacher of sacred learning when I had had no teacher myself. Their aim was for every form of teaching in a school to be forbidden me, and for this end they were always trying to win over bishops, archbishops, abbots, in fact anyone of account in the Church whom they could approach.
Now it happened that I first applied myself to lecturing on the basis of our faith by analogy with human reason, and composed a theological treatise on divine unity and trinity50 for the use of my students who were asking for human and logical reasons on this subject, and demanded something intelligible rather than mere words. In fact they said that words were useless if the intelligence could not follow them, that nothing could be believed unless it was first understood, and that it was absurd for anyone to preach to others what neither he nor those he taught could grasp with the understanding: the Lord himself had criticized such ‘blind guides of blind men’.51 After the treatise had been seen and read by many people it began to please everyone, as it seemed to answer all questions alike on this subject. It was generally agreed that the questions were peculiarly difficult and the importance of the problem was matched by the subtlety of my solution.
My rivals were therefore much annoyed and convened a Council against me, prompted by my two old opponents, Alberic and Lotulf who, now that our former masters, William and Anselm, were dead, were trying to reign alone in their place and succeed them as their heirs. Both of them were heads of the school in Rheims, and there, by repeated insinuations, they were able to influence their archbishop, Ralph, to take action against me and, along with Conan, bishop of Palestrina, who held the office of papal legate in France at the time, to convene an assembly,52 which they called a Council, in the city of Soissons, where I was to be invited to come bringing my treatise on the Trinity. This was done, but before I could make my appearance, my two rivals spread such evil rumours about me amongst the clerks and people that I and the few pupils who had accompanied me narrowly escaped being stoned by the people on the first day we arrived, for having preached and written (so they had been told) that there were three Gods.
I called on the legate as soon as I entered the town, handed him a copy of the treatise for him to read and form an opinion, and declared myself ready to receive correction and make amends if I had written anything contrary to the Catholic faith. But he told me at once to take the book to the archbishop and my opponents, so that my accusers could judge me themselves and the words ‘Our enemies are judges’53 be fulfilled in me. However, though they read and reread the book again and again they could find nothing they dared charge me with at an open hearing, so they adjourned the condemnation they were panting for until the final meeting of the Council. For my part, every day before the Council sat, I spoke in public on the Catholic faith in accordance with what I had written, and all who heard me were full of praise both for my exposition and for my interpretation. When the people and clerks saw this they began to say ‘“Here he is, speaking openly,”54 and no one utters a word against him. The Council which we were told was expressly convened against him is quickly coming to an end. Can the judges have found that the error is theirs, not his?’ This went on every day and added fuel to my enemies’ fury.
And so one day Alberic sought me out with some of his followers, intent on attacking me. After a few polite words he remarked that something he had noticed in the book had puzzled him very much; namely, that although God begat God, and there is only one God, I denied that God had begotten Himself. I said at once that if they wished I would offer an explanation on this point. ‘We take no account of rational explanation,’ he answered, ‘nor of your interpretation in such matters; we recognize only the words of authority.’ ‘Turn the page,’ I said, ‘and you will find the authority.’ There was a copy of the book at hand, which he had brought with him, so I looked up the passage which I knew but which he had failed to see – or else he looked only for what would damage me. By God’s will I found what I wanted at once: a sentence headed ‘Augustine, On the Trinity, Book One’. ‘Whoever supposes that God has the power to beget Himself is in error, and the more so because it is not only God who lacks this power, but also any spiritual or corporeal creature. There is nothing whatsoever which can beget itself.’55
When his followers standing by heard this they blushed in embarrassment, but he tried to cover up his mistake as best he could by saying that this should be understood in the right way. To that I replied that it was nothing new, but was irrelevant at the moment as he was looking only for words, not interpretation. But if he was willing to hear an interpretation and a reasoned argument I was ready to prove to him that by his own words he had fallen into the heresy of supposing the Father to be His own Son. On hearing this he lost his temper and turned to threats, crying that neither my explanations nor my authorities would help me in this case. He then went off.
On the last day of the Council, before the session was resumed, the legate and the archbishop began to discuss at length with my opponents and other persons what decision to take about me and my book, as this was the chief reason for their being convened. They could find nothing to bring against me either in my words or in the treatise which was before them, and everyone stood silent for a while or began to retract his accusation, until Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres,56 who was outstanding among the other bishops for his reputation for holiness and the importance of his see, spoke as follows:
All of you, Sirs, who are here today know that this man’s teaching, whatever it is, and his intellectual ability have won him many followers and supporters wherever he has studied. He has greatly lessened the reputation both of his own teachers and of ours, and his vine has spread its branches from sea to sea.57 If you injure him through prejudice, though I do not think you will, you must know that even if your judgement is deserved you will offend many people, and large numbers will rally to his defence; especially as in this treatise before us we can see nothing which deserves any public condemnation. Jerome has said that ‘Courage which is unconcealed always attracts envy, and lightning strikes the mountain-peaks.’58 Beware lest violent action on your part brings him even more renown, and we are more damaged ourselves for our envy than he is through the justice of the charge. Jerome also reminds us that ‘A false rumour is soon stifled, and a man’s later life passes judgement on his past.’59 But if you are determined to act canonically against him, let his teaching or his writing be put before us, let him be questioned and allowed to give free reply, so that if he is convicted or confesses his error he can be totally silenced. This will at least be in accordance with the words of holy Nicodemus, when he wished to set free the Lord himself: ‘Does our law permit us to pass judgement on a man unless we have first given him a hearing and learned the facts?’60
At once my rivals broke in with an outcry: ‘Fine advice that is, to bid us compete with the ready tongue of a man whose arguments and sophistries could triumph over the whole world!’ (But it was surely far harder to compete with Christ, and yet Nicodemus61 asked for him to be given a hearing, as sanctioned by the law.) However, when the bishop could not persuade them to agree to his proposal, he tried to curb their hostility by other means, saying that the few people present were insufficient for discussing a matter of such importance, and this case needed longer consideration. His further advice was that my abbot, who was present, should take me back to my monastery, the Abbey of St Denis, and there a larger number of more learned men should be assembled to go into the case thoroughly and decide what was to be done. The legate agreed with this last suggestion, and so did everyone else. Soon after, the legate rose to celebrate Mass before he opened the Council. Through Bishop Geoffrey he sent me the permission agreed on: I was to return to my monastery and await a decision.
Then my rivals, thinking that they had achieved nothing if this matter were taken outside their diocese, where they would have no power to use force – it was plain that they had little confidence in the justice of their cause – convinced the archbishop that it would be an insult to his dignity if the case were transferred and heard elsewhere, and a serious danger if I were allowed to escape as a result. They hurried to the legate, made him reverse his decision and persuaded him against his better judgement to condemn the book without any inquiry, burn it immediately in the sight of all and condemn me to perpetual confinement in a different monastery. They said that the fact that I had dared to read the treatise in public and must have allowed many people to make copies without its being approved by the authority of the Pope62 or the Church should be quite enough to condemn it, and that the Christian faith would greatly benefit if an example were made of me and similar presumption in many others were forestalled. As the legate was less of a scholar than he should have been, he relied largely on the advice of the archbishop, who in turn relied on theirs. When the bishop of Chartres saw what would happen he told me at once about their intrigues and strongly urged me not to take it too hard, as by now it was apparent to all that they were acting too harshly. He said I could be confident that such violence so clearly prompted by jealousy would discredit them and benefit me, and told me not to worry about being confined in a monastery as he knew that the papal legate was only acting under pressure, and would set me quite free within a few days of his leaving Soissons. So he gave me what comfort he could, both of us shedding tears.
I was then summoned and came at once before the Council. Without any questioning or discussion they compelled me to throw my book into the fire with my own hands, and so it was burnt. But so that they could appear to have something to say, one of my enemies muttered that he understood it was written in the book that only God the Father was Almighty. Overhearing this, the legate replied in great surprise that one would scarcely believe a small child could make such a mistake, seeing that it is a professed tenet of our common faith that there are three Almighties. Thereupon the head of a school, Thierry by name,63 laughed and quoted the words of Athanasius: ‘And yet there are not three Almighties, but one Almighty.’64 His bishop spoke sharply to him and rebuked him for contempt of court, but he boldly stood his ground and, in the words of Daniel: ‘“Are you such fools, you Israelites, thus to condemn a woman of Israel, without making careful inquiry and finding out the truth? Reopen the trial,”’65 he said, ‘and judge the judge himself. You appointed this judge for the establishment of the Faith and the correction of error; but the person who should be doing the judging has condemned himself out of his own mouth. Today God in his mercy clearly acquits this innocent man as he delivered Susanna of old from the hands of her false accusers!’
Then the archbishop rose to his feet and confirmed the opinion of the legate, changing only the wording, as was needed. ‘Truly, my lord,’ he said, ‘the Father is Almighty, the Son is Almighty and the Holy Spirit is Almighty, and whoever does not share this belief is clearly in error and should not be heard. And now, with your permission, it would be proper for our brother to profess his faith before us all, so that it may be duly approved or disapproved and corrected.’ I then stood up to make a full profession of my faith and explain what I felt in my own words, but my enemies declared that it was only necessary for me to recite the Athanasian Creed66 – as any boy could do. They even had the text put before me to read in case I should plead ignorance, as though I were not familiar with the words. I read it out as best I could through my tears, choked with sobs. Then I was handed over as if guilty and condemned to the abbot of St Médard,67 who was present, and taken off to his cloister as if to prison. The Council then immediately dispersed.
The abbot and monks of St Médard welcomed me most warmly and treated me with every consideration, thinking that I should remain with them in future. They tried hard to comfort me, but in vain. God who judges equity, with what bitterness of spirit and anguish of mind did I reproach you in my madness and accuse you in my fury, constantly repeating the lament of St Antony68 – ‘Good Jesus, where were you?’ All the grief and indignation, the blushes for shame, the agony of despair I suffered then I cannot put into words. I compared my present plight with my physical suffering in the past, and judged myself the unhappiest of men. My former betrayal seemed small in comparison with the wrongs I now had to endure, and I wept much more for the injury done to my reputation than for the damage to my body, for that I had brought upon myself through my own fault, but this open violence had come upon me only because of the purity of my intentions and love of our Faith which had compelled me to write.
But as the news spread and everyone who heard it began to condemn outright this wanton act of cruelty, the persons who had been present tried to shift the blame on to others; so much so that even my rivals denied it had been done on their advice, and the legate publicly denounced the jealousy of the French in this affair. He soon regretted his conduct and, some days later, feeling that he had satisfied their jealousy at a time when under constraint, he had me brought out of St Médard and sent back to my own monastery, where, as I said above, nearly all the monks who were there before were now my enemies; for their disgraceful way of life and scandalous practices made them deeply suspicious of a man whose criticisms they could ill endure.
A few months later chance gave them the opportunity to work for my downfall. It happened that one day in my reading I came across a statement of Bede, in his Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles,69 which asserted that Dionysius the Areopagite was bishop of Corinth, not of Athens. This seemed in direct contradiction to their claim that their patron Denis is to be identified with the famous Areopagite70 whose history shows him to have been bishop of Athens. I showed my discovery, by way of a joke, to some of the brothers who were standing by, as evidence from Bede which was against us. They were very much annoyed and said that Bede was a complete liar and they had a more truthful witness in their own abbot Hilduin,71 who had spent a long time travelling in Greece to investigate the matter; he had found out the truth and removed all shadow of doubt in the history of the saint which he had compiled himself. Then one of them abruptly demanded my opinion on the discrepancy between Bede and Hilduin. I replied that the authority of Bede, whose writings are accepted by the entire Latin Church, carried more weight with me.72
In their fury at this answer they began to cry that now I had openly revealed myself as the enemy of the monastery, and was moreover a traitor to the whole country73 in seeking to destroy the glory that was its special pride by denying that their patron was the Areopagite. I said that I had not denied it, nor did it much matter whether he was the Areopagite74 or came from somewhere else, seeing that he had won so bright a crown in the eyes of God. However, they hurried straight to the abbot and told him what they accused me of. He was only too ready to listen and delighted to seize the opportunity to destroy me,75 for he had the greater reason to fear me as his own life was even more scandalous than that of the rest. He summoned his council, and the chapter of the brethren, and denounced me severely, saying that he would send me straightaway to the king for punishment on the charge of having designs on the royal dignity and crown. Meanwhile he put me under close surveillance until I could be handed over to the king. I offered to submit myself to the discipline of the Rule if I had done wrong, but in vain.
I was so horrified by their wickedness and in such deep despair after having borne the blows of fortune so long, feeling that the whole world had conspired against me, that with the help of a few brothers who took pity on me and the support of some of my pupils I fled secretly in the night, and took refuge in the neighbouring territory of Count Theobald,76 where once before I had stayed in a priory. I was slightly acquainted with the Count personally, and he had heard of my afflictions and took pity on me. There I began to live in the town of Provins,77 in a community of monks from Troyes whose prior had long been my close friend and loved me dearly. He was overjoyed by my arrival and made every provision for me.
But one day it happened that the abbot of St Denis came to the town to see Count Theobald on some personal business; on hearing this, I approached the count, along with the prior, and begged him to intercede for me with the abbot and obtain his pardon and permission to live a monastic life wherever a suitable place could be found. The abbot and those with him took counsel together on the matter, so as to give the count their answer the same day, before they left. On deliberation they formed the opinion that my intention was to be transferred to another abbey and that this would be a great reproach to them, for they considered that I had brought them great glory when I entered the religious life by coming to them in preference to all other abbeys, and now it would be a serious disgrace if I cast them off and went elsewhere. Consequently they would not hear a word on the subject either from the count or from me. Moreover they threatened me with excommunication if I did not return quickly, and absolutely forbade the prior with whom I had taken refuge to keep me any longer, under penalty of sharing my excommunication.
Both the prior and I were very much alarmed at this. The abbot departed, still in the same mind, and a few days later he died. When his successor was appointed,78 I met him with the bishop of Meaux, hoping that he would grant what I had sought from his predecessor. He too was unwilling to do so at first; but through the intervention of some of my friends I appealed to the king and his council, and so got what I wanted. A certain Stephen,79 the king’s seneschal at the time, summoned the abbot and his supporters and asked why they wished to hold me against my will when this could easily involve them in scandal and do no good, as my life and theirs could never possibly agree. I knew that the opinion of the king’s council was that the more irregular an abbey was, the more reason why it should be subject to the king and bring him profit, at least as regards its worldly goods, and this made me think that I should easily win the consent of the king and his council – which I did. But so that the monastery should not lose the reputation gained from having me as a member, I was given permission to withdraw to any retreat I liked, provided that I did not come under the authority of any abbey. This was agreed and confirmed on both sides in the presence of the king and his council.
And so I took myself off to a lonely spot I had known before in the territory of Troyes, and there, on a piece of land given me, by leave of the local bishop, I built a sort of oratory80 of reeds and thatch and dedicated it in the name of the Holy Trinity. Here I could stay hidden alone but for one of my clerks, and truly cry out to the Lord ‘Lo, I escaped far away and found a refuge in the wilderness.’81
No sooner was this known than the students began to gather there from all parts, hurrying from cities and towns to inhabit the wilderness, leaving large mansions to build themselves little huts, eating wild herbs and coarse bread instead of delicate food, spreading reeds and straw in place of soft beds and using banks of turf for tables. They could rightly be thought of as imitating the early philosophers, of whom Jerome in the second book of his Against Jovinian says:
The senses are like windows through which the vices gain entry into the soul. The capital and citadel of the spirit cannot be taken except by a hostile army entering through the gates. If anyone takes pleasure in the circus and athletic contests, an actor’s pantomime or a woman’s beauty, the splendour of jewels and garments or anything of that sort, the liberty of his soul is captured through the window of the eye, and the word of the prophet is fulfilled: ‘Death has climbed in through our windows.’82 So when the marshalled forces of distraction have marched through these gates into the citadel of the soul, where will its liberty be and its fortitude? Where will be its thoughts of God? Especially when sensibility pictures for itself pleasures of the past and by recalling its vices compels the soul to take part in them and, as it were, to practise what it does not actually do. These are the considerations which have led many philosophers to leave crowded cities and the gardens outside them, where they find that water meadows and leafy trees, twittering of birds, reflections in spring waters and murmuring brooks are so many snares for eye and ear; they fear that amidst all this abundance of riches the strength of the soul will weaken and its purity be soiled. No good comes from looking often on what may one day seduce you, and in exposing yourself to the temptation of what you find it difficult to do without. Indeed, the Pythagoreans used to shun this kind of contact and lived in solitude in the desert. Plato himself was a wealthy man (and his couch was trampled on by Diogenes with muddy feet),83 yet in order to give all his time to philosophy he chose to set up his Academy some way from the city on a site which was unhealthy as well as deserted, so that the perpetual preoccupation of sickness would break the assaults of lust, and his pupils would know no pleasures but what they had from their studies.84
Such too was the life that the sons of the prophets, the followers of Elisha, are said to have led, of whom (amongst other things) Jerome writes to the monk Rusticus, as if they were the monks of their time, that ‘The sons of the prophets, who are called monks in the Old Testament, built themselves huts by the river Jordan, and abandoned city crowds to live on barley meal and wild herbs.’85 My pupils built themselves similar huts on the banks of the Ardusson, and looked like hermits rather than scholars.
But the greater the crowds of students who gathered there and the harder the life they led under my teaching, the more my rivals thought this brought honour to me and shame upon themselves. They had done all they could to harm me, and now they could not bear to see things turning out for my advantage; and so, in the words of Jerome: ‘Remote as I was from cities, public affairs, law-courts and crowds, envy (as Quintilian says) sought me out in my retreat.’86 They brooded silently over their wrongs, and then began to complain ‘“Why, all the world has gone after him”87 – we have gained nothing by persecuting him, only increased his fame. We meant to extinguish the light of his name but all we have done is make it shine still brighter. See how the students have everything they need at hand in the cities, but they scorn the comforts of civilization, flock to the barren wilderness and choose this wretched life of their own accord.’
Now it was sheer pressure of poverty at the time which determined me to open a school, since I was ‘not strong enough to dig and too proud to beg’;88 so I returned to the skill which I knew, and made use of my tongue instead of working with my hands. For their part, my pupils provided all I needed unasked,89 food, clothing, work on the land as well as building expenses, so that I should not be kept from my studies by domestic cares of any kind. As my oratory could not hold even a modest proportion of their numbers, they were obliged to enlarge it, and improved it by building in wood and stone. It had been founded and dedicated in the name of the Holy Trinity, but because I had come there as a fugitive and in the depths of my despair had been granted some comfort by the grace of God, I named it the Paraclete,90 in memory of this gift. Many who heard the name were astonished, and several people violently attacked me, on the grounds that it was not permissible for my church to be assigned specifically to the Holy Spirit any more than to God the Father, but that it must be dedicated according to ancient custom either to the Son alone or to the whole Trinity.
This false charge doubtless arose from their mistaken belief that there was no distinction between the Paraclete and the Holy Spirit as Paraclete. In fact, the whole Trinity or any member of the Trinity may be addressed as God and Protector and equally properly be addressed as Paraclete, that is, Comforter, according to the words of the Apostle: ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the all-merciful Father and the God whose consolation never fails us. He comforts us in all our troubles; and as the Truth says, “And he shall give you another to be your Comforter.”’91 When the whole Church is consecrated in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and is in their possession indivisibly, what is to prevent the house of the Lord from being ascribed to the Father or to the Holy Spirit just as much as to the Son? Who would presume to erase the owner’s name from above his door? Or again, when the Son has offered himself as a sacrifice to the Father, and consequently, in celebrations of the Mass it is the Father to whom prayers are specially directed and the Host is offered, why should the altar not properly be particularly his to whom prayer and sacrifice are specially offered? Is it any better to say that the altar belongs to him who is sacrificed than to him to whom sacrifice is made? Would anyone claim that an altar is better named after the Lord’s Cross, or the Sepulchre, St Michael, St John or St Peter, or any other saint who is neither sacrificed there nor receives sacrifice, nor has prayers addressed to him? Surely even amongst the idolators, altars and temples were said to belong only to those who received sacrifice and homage. Perhaps someone may say that neither churches nor altars should be dedicated to the Father because no deed of his exists which calls for a special feast in his honour. But this argument detracts from the entire Trinity, not from the Holy Spirit, since the Holy Spirit by its coming has its own feast of Pentecost,92 just as the Son, by his, has the feast of the Nativity; for the Holy Spirit claims its own feast by coming among the disciples just as the Son came into the world.
In fact it seems more fitting that a temple should be ascribed to the Holy Spirit than to any other member of the Trinity, if we pay careful attention to apostolic authority and the workings of the Holy Spirit itself. To none of the three does the Apostle assign a special shrine except to the Holy Spirit, for he speaks neither of a shrine of the Father nor of the Son as he does of the Holy Spirit when he writes in the First Letter to the Corinthians: ‘But he who links himself with Christ is one with him, spiritually,’ and again, ‘Do you not know that your body is a shrine of the in-dwelling Holy Spirit, and the spirit is God’s gift to you? You do not belong to yourselves.’93 Everyone knows too that the divine benefits of the sacraments administered in the Church are ascribed particularly to the effective power of divine Grace, by which is meant the Holy Spirit. For by water and the Holy Spirit we are reborn in baptism, after which we first become a special temple for God; and in the sacrament of confirmation the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit is conferred on us whereby the temple of God is adorned and dedicated. Is it then surprising that we dedicate a material temple to the one to whom the Apostle has specially ascribed a spiritual one? To whom can a church be more fittingly consecrated than to the one to whose effective power all the benefits of the Church sacraments are particularly ascribed? However, in first giving my oratory the name of Paraclete I had no thought of declaring its dedication to a single person; my reason was simply what I said above – it was in memory of the comfort I had found there. But even if I had done so with the intention that was generally believed, it would not have been unreasonable, though unknown to general custom.
Meanwhile, though my person lay hidden in this place, my fame travelled all over the world, resounding everywhere like that poetic creation Echo, so called because she has so large a voice but no substance.94 My former rivals could do nothing by themselves, and therefore stirred up against me some new apostles in whom the world had great faith.95 One of these boasted that he had reformed the life of the Canons Regular,96 the other the life of the monks.97 They went up and down the country, slandering me shamelessly in their preaching as much as they could, and for a while brought me into considerable disrepute in the eyes of the ecclesiastical as well as of the secular authorities; and they spread such evil reports of my faith and of my way of life that they also turned some of my chief friends against me, while any who up till now had retained some of their old affection for me took fright and tried to conceal this as best they could. God is my witness that I never heard that an assembly of ecclesiastics had met without thinking this was convened to condemn me. I waited like one in terror of being struck by lightning to be brought before a council or synod and charged with heresy or profanity, and, if I may compare the flea with the lion, the ant with the elephant, my rivals persecuted me with the same cruelty as the heretics in the past did St Athanasius. Often, God knows, I fell into such a state of despair that I thought of quitting the realm of Christendom and going over to the heathen,98 there to live a quiet Christian life amongst the enemies of Christ at the cost of what tribute was asked. I told myself they would receive me more kindly for having no suspicion that I was a Christian on account of the charges against me, and they would therefore believe I could more easily be won over to their pagan beliefs.
While I was continuously harassed by these anxieties and as a last resort had thought of taking refuge with Christ among Christ’s enemies, an opportunity was offered me which I believed would bring me some respite from the plots against me; but in taking it I fell among Christians and monks who were far more savage and wicked than the heathen. There was in Brittany, in the diocese of Vannes, the Abbey of St Gildas de Rhuys, which the death of its abbot had left without a superior. I was invited there by the unanimous choice of the monks, with the approval of the lord of the district,99 and permission from the abbot and brothers of my monastery was easily obtained. Thus the jealousy of the French drove me West as that of the Romans once drove St Jerome East.100 God knows, I should never have accepted this offer had I not hoped to find some escape from the attacks which, as I said, I had perpetually to endure. The country was wild and the language unknown to me,101 the natives were brutal and barbarous, the monks were beyond control and led a dissolute life which was well known to all. Like a man who rushes at a precipice in terror at the sword hanging over him, and at the very moment he escapes one death, meets another, I wilfully took myself from one danger to another, and there by the fearful roar of the waves of the Ocean, at the far ends of the earth where I could flee no further, I used to repeat in my prayers the words of the Psalmist: ‘From the end of the earth I have called to thee when my heart was in anguish.’102
Everyone knows now, I think, of this anguish which my tormented heart suffered night and day at the hands of that undisciplined community I had undertaken to direct, while I thought of the dangers to my soul as well as to my body. I was certain at any rate that if I tried to bring them back to the life of Rule for which they had taken their vows it would cost me my own life; yet if I did not do my utmost to achieve this, I should be damned. In addition, the abbey had long been subject to a certain very powerful tyrant in that land who had taken advantage of the disorder in the monastery to appropriate all its adjoining lands for his own use, and was exacting heavier taxes from the monks than he would have done from Jews subject to tribute.103 The monks beset me with demands for their daily needs, though there was no common allowance for me to distribute, but each one of them provided for himself, his concubine and his sons and daughters from his own purse. They took delight in distressing me over this, and they also stole and carried off what they could, so that when I had reached the end of my resources I should be forced to abandon my attempt at enforcing discipline or leave them altogether. The entire savage population of the area was similarly lawless and out of control; there was no one I could turn to for help since I disapproved equally of the morals of them all. Outside the monastery wall that tyrant and his minions never ceased to harry me, inside it the monks were always setting traps for me, until it seemed that the words of the Apostle applied especially to my case: ‘Quarrels all round us, forebodings in our heart.’104
I used to weep as I thought of the wretched, useless life I led, as profitless to myself as to others; I had once done so much for the clerks, and now that I had abandoned them for the monastery, all I did for them and for the monks was equally fruitless. I had proved ineffective in all my attempts and undertakings, so that now above all men I justly merited the reproach, ‘There is the man who started to build and could not finish.’105 I was in deep despair when I remembered what I had fled from and considered what I had met with now; my former troubles were as nothing in retrospect, and I often used to groan and tell myself that I deserved my present sufferings for deserting the Paraclete, the Comforter, and plunging myself into certain desolation – in my eagerness to escape from threats I had run into actual dangers.
What tormented me most of all was the thought that in abandoning my oratory I had been unable to make proper provision for celebrating the Divine Office, since the place was so poor that it could barely provide for the needs of one man. But then again the true Paraclete himself brought me true comfort in my great distress, and provided for the oratory as was fitting, for it was his own. It happened that my abbot of St Denis by some means took possession of the Abbey of Argenteuil where Heloise – now my sister in Christ rather than my wife – had taken the veil. He claimed that it belonged to his monastery by ancient right,106 and forcibly expelled the community of nuns, of which she was prioress, so that they were now scattered as exiles in various places. I realized that this was an opportunity sent me by the Lord for providing for my oratory, and so I returned and invited her, along with some other nuns from the same convent who would not leave her, to come to the Paraclete; and once they had gathered there,107 I handed it over to them as a gift, and also everything that went with it. Subsequently, with the approval of the local bishop acting as intermediary, my deed of gift was confirmed by Pope Innocent the Second by charter108 in perpetuity to them and their successors.
Their life there was full of hardship at first and for a while they suffered the greatest deprivation, but soon God, whom they served devoutly, in his mercy brought them comfort; he showed himself a true Paraclete to them too in making the local people sympathetic and kindly disposed towards them. Indeed, I fancy that their worldly goods were multiplied more in a single year than mine would have been in a hundred, had I remained there, for a woman, being the weaker sex, is the more pitiable in a state of need, easily rousing human sympathy, and her virtue is the more pleasing to God as it is to man. And such favour in the eyes of all did God bestow on that sister of mine who was in charge of the other nuns, that bishops loved her as a daughter, abbots as a sister, the laity as a mother; while all alike admired her piety and wisdom, and her unequalled gentleness and patience in every situation. The more rarely she allowed herself to be seen (so that she could devote herself without distraction to prayer and meditation on holy things in a closed cell), the more eagerly did those outside demand her presence and her spiritual conversation for their guidance.
But then all the people in the neighbourhood began attacking me violently for doing less than I could and should to minister to the needs of the women, as (they said) I was certainly well able to do, if only through my preaching; so I started to visit them more often to see how I could help them. This provoked malicious insinuations, and my detractors, with their usual perverseness, had the effrontery to accuse me of doing what genuine charity prompted because I was still a slave to the pleasures of carnal desire and could rarely or never bear the absence of the woman I had once loved. I often repeated to myself the lament of St Jerome in his letter to Asella about false friends: ‘The only fault found in me is my sex, and that only when Paula comes to Jerusalem.’ And again: ‘Before I knew the house of saintly Paula, my praises were sung throughout the city, and nearly everyone judged me worthy of the highest office of the Church. But I know well that it is through good and evil report that we make our way to the kingdom of heaven.’109
When, as I say, I recalled the injustice of such a calumny against so great a man, I took no small comfort from it. ‘If my rivals,’ said I, ‘were to find such strong grounds for suspicion in my case, how I should suffer from their slander! But now that I have been freed from such suspicion by God’s mercy, and the power to commit this sin is taken from me, how can the suspicion remain? What is the meaning of this latest monstrous accusation? My present condition removes suspicion of evil-doing so completely from everyone’s mind that men who wish to keep close watch on their wives employ eunuchs, as sacred history tells us in the case of Esther and the other concubines of King Ahasuerus.110 We also read that it was a eunuch of the Ethiopian Queen Candace, a man of authority in charge of all her treasure, whom the apostle Philip was directed by the angel to convert and baptize.111 Such men have always held positions of responsibility and familiarity in the homes of modest and honourable women simply because they are far removed from suspicions of this kind, and it was to rid himself of it entirely, when planning to include women in his teaching of sacred learning, that the great Christian philosopher Origen laid violent hands on himself, as Book Six of the History of the Church relates.’112 However, I thought that in this God’s mercy had been kinder to me than to him, for he is believed to have acted on impulse and been strongly censured as a result, whereas it had happened to me through no fault of mine, but so that I might be set free for a similar work; and with all the less pain for being quick and sudden, for I was asleep when attacked and felt practically nothing.
Yet though perhaps I suffered less physical pain at the time, I am now the more distressed for the calumny I must endure. My agony is less for the mutilation of my body than for the damage to my reputation, for it is written that ‘A good name is more to be desired than great riches.’113 In his sermon On the Life and Morals of Clerics St Augustine remarks that ‘He who relies on his conscience to the neglect of his reputation is cruel to himself,’ and earlier on says: ‘“For our aims,” as the Apostle says, “are honourable not only in God’s sight but also in the eyes of men.”114 For ourselves, our conscience within us is sufficient. For your sake, our reputation should not be sullied but should be powerful amongst you. Conscience and reputation are two different things; conscience concerns yourself, reputation your neighbour.’115 But what would my enemies in their malice have said to Christ himself and his followers, to the prophets, the apostles or the other holy Fathers, had they lived in their times, when these men were seen with their manhood intact consorting with women on the friendliest terms? Here also St Augustine in his book On the Work of Monks proves that women too were the inseparable companions of our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles, even to the extent of accompanying them on their preaching:
To this end, faithful women who had worldly goods went with them and made provision for them so that they should lack none of the necessities of this life. If anyone does not believe that it was the practice of the apostles to take with them women of holy life wherever they preached the Gospel, he has only to hear the Gospel to know that they did this following the example of the Lord himself. For there it is written: ‘After this he went journeying from town to town and village to village, proclaiming the good news of God. With him were the Twelve and a number of women who had been set free from evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, known as Mary of Magdala … Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others. These women provided for them out of their own resources.’116
Leo the Ninth too, in answer to a letter of Parmenian, of the monastery of Studius, says:
We declare absolutely that no bishop, presbyter, deacon or subdeacon may give up the care of his wife in the name of religion, so as not to provide her with food and clothing, though he may not lie with her carnally. This was the practice of the holy apostles, as we read in St Paul: ‘Have I no right to take a Christian wife about with me, like the rest of the apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?’ Take note, you fool, that he did not say ‘Have I no right to embrace a wife’ but ‘to take about’, meaning that they should support their wives on the profit from their preaching, not that they should have further carnal intercourse with them.117
Certainly that Pharisee who said to himself of the Lord, ‘If this man were a real prophet he would know who this woman is who touches him, and what sort of woman she is, a sinner,’118 could have supposed far more easily, as far as human judgement goes, that the Lord was guilty of evil-living than my enemies could imagine the same of me; while anyone who saw the Lord’s mother entrusted to the care of a young man or the prophets enjoying the hospitality and conversation of widows119 would entertain far more probable suspicions. And what would my detractors have said if they had seen Malchus, the captive monk of whom St Jerome writes, living in the same home with his wife?120 In their eyes it would have been a great crime, though the famous doctor had nothing but high praise for what he saw: ‘There was an old man named Malchus there … a native of the place, and an old woman living in his cottage … Both of them were so eager for the faith, for ever wearing down the threshold of the church, that you would have thought them Zacharias and Elizabeth in the Gospel but for the fact that John was not with them.’
Finally, why do they refrain from accusing the holy Fathers themselves, when we have often read or seen how they founded monasteries for women too and ministered to them there, following the example of the seven deacons, who were appointed to wait at table and look after the women?121 The weaker sex needs the help of the stronger, so much so that the Apostle lays down that the man must always be over the woman, as her head, and as a sign of this he orders her always to have her head covered.122 And so I am much surprised that the custom should have been long established in convents of putting abbesses in charge of women just as abbots are set over men, and of binding women by profession according to the same rule, for there is so much in the Rule which cannot be carried out by women, whether in authority or subordinate. In several places too, the natural order is overthrown to the extent that we see abbesses and nuns ruling the clergy123 who have authority over the people, with opportunities of leading them on to evil desires in proportion to their dominance, holding them as they do beneath a heavy yoke. The satirist has this in mind when he says that ‘Nothing is more intolerable than a rich woman.’124
After much reflection I decided to do all I could to provide for the sisters of the Paraclete, to manage their affairs, to watch over them in person too, so that they would revere me the more, and thus to minister better to their needs. The persecution I was now suffering at the hands of the monks who were my sons was even more persistent and distressing than what I had endured previously from my brothers, so I thought I could turn to the sisters as a haven of peace and safety from the raging storms, find repose there for a while, and at least achieve something amongst them though I had failed with the monks. Indeed, the more they needed me in their weakness, the more it would benefit me.
But now Satan has put so many obstacles in my path that I can find nowhere to rest or even to live; a fugitive and wanderer I carry everywhere the curse of Cain,125 forever tormented (as I said above) by ‘quarrels all round us, forebodings in our heart’, or rather, quarrels and forebodings without and within. The hostility of my sons here is far more relentless and dangerous than that of my enemies, for I have them always with me and must be forever on my guard against their treachery. I can see my enemies’ violence as a danger to my person if I go outside the cloister; but it is within the cloister that I have to face the incessant assaults – as crafty as they are violent – of my sons, that is, of the monks entrusted to my care, as their abbot and father. How many times have they tried to poison me – as happened to St Benedict!126 The same reason which led him to abandon his depraved sons might well have encouraged me to follow the example of so great a Father of the Church, lest in exposing myself to certain dangers I should be thought a rash tempter rather than a true lover of God, or even appear to be my own destroyer. And while I guarded as well as I could against their daily assaults by providing my own food and drink, they tried to destroy me during the very sacrifice of the altar127 by putting poison in the chalice. On another day, when I had gone into Nantes to visit the count who was ill, and was staying there in the home of one of my brothers in the flesh, they tried to poison me by the hand of one of the servants accompanying me, supposing, no doubt, that I should be less on my guard against a plot of that kind. By God’s intervention it happened that I did not touch any of the food prepared for me. But one of the monks I had brought from the abbey, who knew nothing of their intentions, ate it and dropped dead; and the servant who had dared to do this fled in terror, as much through consciousness of his guilt as because of the evidence of his crime.
From then on their villainy was known to all, and I began to make no secret of the fact that I was avoiding their snares as well as I could; I even removed myself from the abbey and lived in small cells with a few companions. But whenever the monks heard that I was travelling anywhere they would bribe robbers and station them on the roads and byways to murder me. I was still struggling against all these perils when one day the hand of the Lord struck me sharply and I fell from my saddle, breaking my collar-bone. This fracture caused me far greater pain and weakened me more than my previous injury. Sometimes I tried to put a stop to their lawless insubordination by excommunication, and compelled those of them I most feared to promise me either on their honour or on oath taken before the rest that they would leave the abbey altogether and trouble me no more. But then they would openly and shamelessly violate both the word they had given and the oaths they had sworn, until in the end they were forced to renew their oaths on this and many other things in the presence of the count and the bishops, by authority of the Roman Pope Innocent, through his special legate128 sent for this purpose.
Even then they would not live in peace. After those mentioned had been expelled, I recently came back to the abbey and entrusted myself to the remaining brothers from whom I thought I had less to fear. I found them even worse than the others. They did not deal with poison but with a dagger held to my throat, and it was only under the protection of a certain lord of the land that I managed to escape. I am still in danger, and every day I imagine a sword hanging over my head, so that at meals I dare scarcely breathe: like the man we read about, who supposed the power and wealth of the tyrant Dionysius to constitute the greatest happiness, until he looked up and saw a sword suspended by a thread over Dionysius’s head.129 Then he learned what sort of joy it is which accompanies earthly power. This is my experience all the time; a poor monk raised to be an abbot, the more wretched as I have become more wealthy, in order that my example may curb the ambition of those who have deliberately chosen a similar course.
Dearly beloved brother in Christ, close friend and longstanding companion, this is the story of my misfortunes which have dogged me almost since I left my cradle; let the fact that I have written it with your own affliction and the injury you have suffered in mind suffice to enable you (as I said at the beginning of this letter) to think of your trouble as little or nothing in comparison with mine, and to bear it with more patience when you can see it in proportion. Take comfort from what the Lord told his followers about the followers of the Devil: ‘As they persecuted me they will persecute you. If the world hates you, it hated me first, as you know well. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own.’130 And the Apostle says: ‘Persecution will come to all who want to live a godly life as Christians,’ and elsewhere, ‘Do you think I am currying favour with men? If I still sought men’s favour I should be no servant of Christ.’131 The Psalmist says that ‘They are destroyed who seek to please men, since God has rejected them.’132 It was with this particularly in mind that St Jerome, whose heir I consider myself as regards slanders and false accusations, wrote in his letter to Nepotian: ‘“If I still sought men’s favour,” says the Apostle, “I should be no servant of Christ.” He has ceased to seek men’s favour and is become the servant of Christ.’133 He also wrote to Asella, concerning false friends, ‘Thank God I have deserved the hatred of the world,’ and to the monk Heliodorus: ‘You are wrong, brother, wrong if you think that the Christian can ever be free of persecution. Our adversary “like a roaring lion, prowls around, seeking someone to devour”, and do you think of peace? “He sits in ambush with the rich.”’134
Let us then take heart from these proofs and examples, and bear our wrongs the more cheerfully the more we know they are undeserved. Let us not doubt that if they add nothing to our merit, at least they contribute to the expiation of our sins. And since everything is managed by divine ordinance, each one of the faithful, when it comes to the test, must take comfort at least from the knowledge that God’s supreme goodness allows nothing to be done outside his plan, and whatever is started wrongly, he himself brings it to the best conclusion. Hence in all things it is right to say to him, ‘Thy will be done.’135 Finally, think what consolation comes to those who love God on the authority of the Apostle, who says: ‘As we know, all things work together for good for those who love God.’136 This is what the wisest of mankind had in mind when he said in his Proverbs: ‘Whatever befalls the righteous man it shall not sadden him.’137 Here he clearly shows that those who are angered by some personal injury, though they well know it has been laid on them by divine dispensation, leave the path of righteousness and follow their own will rather than God’s; they rebel in their secret hearts against the meaning of the words ‘Thy will be done’, and set their own will above the will of God. Farewell.