Абеляр

Abelard is a famous scholastic writer and philosopher, born in Brittany in 1079; died in the monastery of St. Marcellus, near Chalons, April 21, 1142. He was the eldest son of a gentleman, owner of the village of Palais. His Christian name was Peter Palatine; but when he renounced his birthright and renounced his rights to his father’s inheritance in order to devote his entire life to science, he took the name Abelard (from French abeille, bee, or from French bail, Latin bajulus - teacher). His first teacher of philosophy was Rosselin, who maintained a school at Locmenach, near Vannes, in Brittany, and was a decisive nominalist who declared all universalia to be simply mental concepts. His second teacher was William Champeau, head of the cathedral school in Paris, a decisive realist who declared universalia to be the very essence of all being, and individuality to be a product of only random circumstances. Between these two extremes, the sharp opposition of which constituted the essence of the entire history of scholastic philosophy, Abelard tried to occupy his own special position. His positive views, however, as they are developed in his Dialectics, etc., are vague and even self-contradictory. In philosophy, as in theology, he is simply a critic; but his criticism was as bold as it was brilliant, and in many respects placed him far ahead of his age. He opposed William Champeaux and forced him to change his system - a success that can only be compared to winning a decisive battle. After this success, he opened his own school, although still a very young man, first in Melun, then in Corbeil and finally in Paris. But William Champeau, although beaten, was still a strong man. Abelard was forced to leave Paris, and around 1113 he settled in Lavon, where he studied theology under the guidance of Anselm, a student of Anselm of Canterbury. Soon, however, he returned to Paris when William Champeau left there, and then the most brilliant period of his life began. He taught both theology and philosophy, and more than five thousand students gathered around his pulpit. Almost all the great people of that time, representatives of both the church and society, listened to Abelard. Among his students were Pope Celestine II and Arnold of Brescia; and his books “sold across the seas and the Alps.” But this brilliant career was suddenly interrupted by his relationship with Eloise. She was a young eighteen-year-old girl, the illegitimate daughter of a canon, who lived in the house of her uncle, Canon Fulbert of Paris. She was very devoted to the sciences, and her further education was entrusted to Abelard. But passionate love arose between teacher and student, and they ran away to the house of Abelard’s sister, where Eloise gave birth to a son, Astrolabe. In order to appease the anger of the enraged Fulbert, they entered into a legal marriage, but in order not to interfere with Abelard’s church career, it was decided to keep this marriage secret. Fulbert, however, did not want to agree to this, and when Abelard brought his wife to the Benedictine monastery in Argenteil, near Paris, Fulbert suspected this was a desire on Abelard’s part to get rid of his niece by tonsuring her into monasticism, and decided to take revenge on Abelard. One night he attacked him and castrated him, thereby depriving him of the right to ever hold any church office. Tormented by shame and suffering, Abelard retired to the monastery of Saint-Denis, and lived there for several years (c. 1118), teaching in one secluded house (cella), built for this purpose. But his views on Dionysius the Areopagite, the patron saint of the monastery and of France, brought him into conflict with the monks. He fled, but was forced to return and renounce his views; and although he was subsequently allowed to retire to the Norgen desert, in Chamiagny, where he built an oratorio, the so-called “Paraclete,” he still remained subordinate to the abbot of the monastery of Saint-Denis. Initially, the “Paraclete” was made of reeds and brushwood, but so many students began to gather around the famous teacher that soon a stone building could be erected. Abelard, however, felt unhappy. One of his main theological works, On the Unity and Trinity of the Divinity, was condemned by the Council of Soissons in 1121, and he lived in constant fear of persecution. He accepted election to the position of abbot in the monastery of St. Geldasia in Ruy, in Brittany, but there he found himself in an extremely unpleasant situation. The monks were extremely dissolute and there was no way to establish any discipline. Twice the monks tried to poison him. Finally, they made an attempt to strangle him, and he had to flee to save his life. Meanwhile, since the Argenteuil monastery was closed in 1127, Heloise also moved to the Paraclete, where Abelard lived for some time; but his stay there began to serve as a source of temptation, and he left there. For several years, before Abelard's clash with his strong opponent Bernard of Clairvaux, we have no information about his life. What is known is that John of Salusbury heard that he taught at a school on St. Hill. Genevieve in Paris, in 1136, and that during these years he wrote his autobiography - Historia Salamitatum ("History of Misadventures"). As a theologian, Abelard was a student of Anselm of Canterbury; but since by his very nature he was a critic, while Anselm was a mystic, his dialectic in all respects took him beyond the limits of positive faith. Abelard was a very prolific writer and from his numerous works we will note his most important theological works - dogmatic, religious-philosophical, moral, exegetical and catechistic. The Soissons Council probably condemned his work “Christian Theology,” in which the main subject is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Adjacent to it is a work known under the general title “Theology,” that is, an introduction to theology, which also deals with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Another work, “Abelard’s Thoughts,” is probably the recording of a student. His “Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew and a Christian” has a religious and historical character. The history of dogmas includes the work: “Yes and No” (Sic et Non), which consists of 158 chapters and is a comparison of apparently or actually contradictory sayings of the fathers and teachers of the church in order to refute the opinion of constant unity in their teaching. Abelard dealt with moral issues in his essay “Morality or the book called: Know Thyself”; but only the first part of it has survived. From the exegetical works a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans is issued. Among his letters, the “Epistola” especially attracts attention, in which Abelard, addressing an unfortunate friend, sets out the story of his own misadventures. It was compiled no earlier than 1132, and is distinguished by its high power of self-knowledge, so that some scientists place it next to the famous “Confession” of Bl. Augustine. As for Abelard’s teaching (there is no question of a system here) and in general his entire direction, he can hardly be considered a straightforward skeptic, although, following Aristotle, he thought that it was good to doubt many things. In his essay “Yes and No,” he by no means wants to indulge in groundless doubt, but, having shown the disagreement of many opinions of the fathers and teachers of the church and the abuses of Roman Catholic theologians, he revealed a desire to return to the Christianity of the apostolic age, even to the Christianity of Christ Himself. Although in general he accepted the position of Bl. Augustine that human authority should be preferred to reason, however, he still rebels against adherents of blind faith in authority, which believes only what has already been said, without even trying to understand what was said. At the same time, he refers to the saying of Sirach: whoever trusts quickly is frivolous (Sir.19:4). This is only the very first degree of faith, based on the strength of the foundations of reason and objective facts. This faith, however, still has no merit before God. Then comes the second degree of faith. This is the kind of faith that, without being carried away by appearances, believes the word of God, and there is the faith of Abraham, which believed in hope against all hope - contra spem in spem credidit. This is how he expressed himself in his work “Theology”. Even these provisions seemed suspicious to many; but his teaching about St. The Trinity directly responded with heresy, which turned against him such a zealot for the purity of the traditional faith as Bernard of Clairvaux. According to his teaching, in God, as an abstract unity, power corresponds to the Father, wisdom to the Son, goodness and love to the Holy Spirit, which form of teaching directly led to modalism. Particularly noteworthy was the comparison of the three faces of St. Trinity with a medal, and, firstly, the substance itself represents the Father; secondly, the image of the king carved on it, sigillabila, means the Son; thirdly, the seal itself, sigillans, as consisting of the first two elements, corresponds to the Holy Spirit. This comparison seemed all the more doubtful because Abelard’s disciples everywhere proclaimed that he knew how to intelligently explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity, thereby reconciling faith with knowledge. In addition to the teaching about St. The Trinity was then confused by the position that all the essential truths of Christianity can already be found in ancient philosophers and poets, that the Gospel only made accessible to everyone what was already known before, although it was only the property of the educated. In this regard, however, Abelard had predecessors in St. Justin the Philosopher and in Origen. Abelard’s teaching on reconciliation stands in sharp contrast to the teaching of Anselm, insofar as he sees the effect of the death of Christ (as well as His entire life) in the fact that He, through the revelation of the highest love, arouses mutual love. At the same time, he nevertheless admits that Christ also bore the curse of the law. He agrees with Anselm in rejecting the view that a ransom payment was made to the devil, in which view he quite rightly differed from Bernard. As for finally, Abelard’s attitude to the great philosophical controversial issue of universalia, according to the latest research, he is neither a realist nor a nominalist, but in the proper sense a conceptualist, that is, a champion of the doctrine that universalia are simple concepts (concepts) of the human spirit. Although Abelard had a strong influence on his contemporaries, his influence was not lasting, and precisely because in his teaching rationalism, which was abhorrent to the then, is too clearly evident. imbued with the spirit of churchliness, society. This rationalism turned Bernard against him, who at the Council of Sens in 1141 brought a formal charge of heresy against him. Abelard, finding it useless to defend himself at the council, directly appealed to the pope. But Bernard, for his part, also wrote to the pope, making a denunciation against Arnold of Brescia as one of Abelard’s accomplices, and Pope Innocent III decided the case against the latter, forbade him to write or teach any more, and ordered his works to be burned. Thanks to the friendly intercession of Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, he was allowed to spend the rest of his life in the Cluny monastery. He continued his studies, “always reading, praying often and remaining silent.” He died at the age of sixty-three, while visiting the monastery of St. Marcellus, and was buried in the Paraclete. Heloise died on May 16, 1164, and her body was placed in the same coffin next to Abelard's body. They now rest together in the famous tomb in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. A complete edition of Abelard's works - philosophical, theological, poetic and letters - was made by Cousin in two volumes (Paris 1849 and 1859). See also in Minya, Patr. Lat., volume 178, which, however, did not include Dialecttica and Sic et Non. There is a curious edition in Russian: “Abeillard and Heloise, or a precious collection of letters from these lovers”, Protopopov, Moscow 1816.