Abelard and the origin and early history of universities

Preface

The present essay has no pretension — as its size sufficiently indicates — to be a complete and thorough history of the universities of the Middle Ages.

To write that history with all its details, several volumes would be necessary, volumes rivalling in their dimensions the enormous folios in which the ^erudite have massed the documents relating to each university — as, for instance, the Chartularium of the University of Paris, by Pere Denifle.

I have merely sought, in a sketch which touches on all questions pertaining to this vast subject without exhausting any of them, to give an idea of what these great associations of masters and students which played such an important part in the past, must have been in their beginnings, in their internal organization, their programmes of study, their methods of instruction, and, finally, in their general spirit and external influence.

In spite of the bad reputation given to the old universities by the Humanists of the Eenaissance, it is impossible to ignore the services that they rendered in their time. They constitute an epoch, and a characteristic epoch, in the history of education ; and I hope that the young and brilliant universities of vi PREFACE

America will not find it uninteresting to glance backward at the history of their predecessors in ancient Europe.

In any case, I trust that my readers may find as much pleasure in running through this little book as I have had in writing it. I trust also, that the literary dictionaries of the future, if they should grant me a place in their pages, will have the goodness when they mention my name to follow it with this notice : Gabriel Compayre, a French writer, whose least mediocre work, translated into English before being printed, was published in America.

Poitiers, October 17, 1892.

CONTENTS xiii

PAGE

lie affairs — Political philosophy — Clamor for reforms — Conception of a paternal government — Intervention in ecclesiastical affairs — Other universities — National character — German universities — II. Spirit of liberty in the old universities—Free language toward the Popes themselves — Some examples of independent and bold opinions —Beginnings of a new spirit — More liberal methods of study recommended by Robert de Sorbon — Protests against the discipline of the rod — Preparations for a new era — Decay of the mediseval universities — Conclusion 287

BIBLIOGRAPHY 307

INDEX 311

Part I THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSITIES

CHAPTEE I ABELARD THE F0RERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES

I. Testimony to the influence of Abelard — The transmission of learning from Charlemagne to Abelard — II. The life of Abelard

— His character, his eloquence, his method of teaching — His audiences the first great assemblages of students — III. Abelard's doctrines and point of view — Freedom of inquiry and of reason

— His method followed in the schools of Paris.

Abelard was born in 1079 ; lie died in 1142. The University of Paris^as not formally constituted until sixty years later, in the first years of the thirteenth century. And yet Abelard has been, and should be, considered as the real founder of this university, which served as model and prototype of most of the other universities of the Middle Ages. There is here an apparent paradox which must first be resolved and explained, if the title given to this treatise is to be justified.

Let me begin by establishing the fact that I am in accord with all serious authorities in attributing to Abelard a pre-eminent part in the foundation of the great Parisian University. " The man," Victor Cousin has said, "who, by his qualities and his defects, by the audacity of his opinions, the eclat of his life, his inborn passion for controversy, and his rare talent for instruction, contributed most to increase and expand the taste for study and that intellectual movement from which the University of Paris issued in the thirteenth century, was Peter Abelard." ^ In England the same opinion is held. "The name of Abelard is closely associated with the commencement of the University of Paris," says Cardinal Newman in his interesting essay on Tlie Strength and Weakyiess of Universities.^

In order not to multiply testimony, I shall content myself with invoking finally, that of Pere Denifle, the learned editor of the Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis. "Although Abelard," he says, "taught long before the constitution of the University of Paris, his method of instruction for the sciences, and above all for theology and the liberal arts, nevertheless remained the model which the future university was to follow."^

It is no longer a question whether to accept as true the fabulous origins attributed to the University of Paris by its earliest historians, by Du Boulay ^ or by

1 Ouvrages inedits d' Abelard, publics par V. Cousin, 1836. Introduction,

2 Cardinal Newman, Historical Sketches, vol. iii, p. 192. London, 1889.

3 Chartularium Universitatis Parisieiisis. Paris, Delalain, 1889, t. i, Introduction, p. xvi.

4 Bul^eus, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis ah anno circiter 800. Paris, 1665-1673. 6 vols.

Crevier, who does not hesitate to say : " The University of Paris, as a school, goes back to Alcuin; . . . Charlemagne was its founder." ^

Doubtless, there is no absolute breach of continuity either in the history of the progress of human thought, or in the evolution of scholastic studies. The three centuries which separate Charlemagne from Abelard were not a period of complete inertia, of intellectual slumber, of absolutely obscure night. And it would even be possible to establish, as has been attempted by ingenious and learned men, a sort of filiation from Alcuin to Abelard, which would demonstrate that laborious and instructed men had not ceased to pass the torch of studies from hand to hand.^ Borrowing the biblical style, we might say, Alcuinus genuit Kabanum,^ Babanus autem genuit Lupum servatum;^ . . . and continue thus down to Eoscelinus and William of Champeaux, who were Abelard's masters.

It is incontestable, on the other hand, that important schools were flourishing in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries ; those of Eheims, Tours, Angers, and Laon; that of the Benedictines of Cluny, under Odo (879-942) and his disciples; that of the Benedictines of Bee in Normandy, with Lanfranc (1005- 1089) and St. Anselm (1033-1109) at its head; and an obscure multitude of episcopal or monastic schools,

1 Crevier, Histoire de VUniversite de Paris, 1761, t. vii, pp. 92- 162.

2 Monnier, Alcuin et son influence, p. 189.

2 Rabanus Maurus (776-856), a pupil of Alcuin, opened a celebrated school at Fulda in Germany.

4 Loup de Ferrieres (805-882) taught at Fulda.

established sometimes under the patronage of bishops in the chapter-houses of cathedral churches, sometimes under the protection of monasteries, in which elementary instruction was given. These schools had succeeded to the Schools of the Palace of Charlemagne, "a great but transitory creation."

But neither in the existence of these schools, nor in the hereditary transmission from one individual to another of what then constituted the light luggage of human science, is it possible to see anything more than the remote preparation for the universities of the Middle Ages, and not their direct and immediate origins. The various schools which maintained themselves after the unfruitful efforts of Charlemagne, served no purpose save that of preventing the complete shipwreck of intellectual culture. They might be compared to a Noah's ark, launched upon that sea of ignorance and increasing barbarism, to preserve the sacred deposit of letters and sciences, until the day when the carefully collected germs might again, under circumstances more favorable and a more clement sky, find a soil to fertilize. The episcopal and monastic schools were the cradle of the universities in appearance only.

Abelard, it is true — when, about the year 1100, he arrived at Paris for the first time, at the age of twenty — was a pupil of the episcopal school of the cloister of Notre Dame, which was annexed, as was customary, to the cathedral church. But, though he attended the lectures of William of Champeaux ^ for

1 William of Champeaux, who died in 1121, was one of the most brilliant champions of Realism. See the Abbe Michaud's work:

a time, it was only to separate from him almost immediately, to attack his doctrines, to set himself up as an independent opponent, and, changing from pupil to master, to open in 1102, a school at Melun, and then another at Corbeil, until such time as he should establish himself, ^^ until he should pitch his camp," as he said in his boastful speech on the heights of Ste. Genevieve.^ This single episode in Abelard's life is, as it were, the symbol, the striking image, of the relations subsisting in general between the episcopal schools and the universities ; the latter supplanting the former and installing themselves in their place, or at any rate, relegating them to obscurity or to a secondary position while awaiting the time when they should absorb them completely. "The monastic and episcopal schools," says an English writer,^ "continued to exist long after the rise of the universities ; but it is obvious that if the former represented merely the stationary and conservative element, while the latter attracted to themselves whatever lay beneath the ban of unreasoning authority — all that widened the domain of knowledge or enriched the limits already attained — the comparative importance of the two agencies could not remain the same."

Victor Leclerc says .rightly, that the schools of the bishops and the cloisters "continued to flourish at the same time as the new societies of studies," ^ that

Guillaume de Champeaux et les ecoles de Paris au XII^ Siecle, Paris, 1867.

1 ". . . in monte S. Genovefse scholarum nostrarum castra posui," Ahelardi Opera, edition Cousin, 1849, t. i, p. 6.

2 Mullinger, T^e University of Cambridge. Cambridge, 1873, p. 70. 8 LeclerCf Etat des Lettres au XIV^^ Siecle, i, p. 302.

is to say, the universities. The truth is that, without disappearing, they declined. The universities, protected alike by popes, kings, and emperors, replaced them in the favor of both the civil and the religious powers ; and, drawing to themselves the very great majority of students, they were destined to represent increasingly, in opposition to the immobile tradition of the older schools, the forward march, the movement of ideas, the progress of thought. If one desires to know the real heirs of the monastic and episcopal schools, it is not in the universities that he must seek them, but in the congregations, and the various religious orders, with which precisely it was that the universities had so many struggles to undergo, and whose members they never admitted within their precincts save with suspicion and unwillingly.

II

To prepare the great movement from which the universities were to proceed something different from the passive transmission of certain beliefs accepted with docility was needful, something other than certain schools of theology or timid dialectics piously sleeping within the bosom of the Church. To begin with, a man, a scholar, must be found sufficiently Catholic not to quarrel with the received dogmas, but nevertheless bold enough to open new paths for himself, and, at the same time, powerful enough, both in speech and in thought, to move minds, arouse the taste for study, assemble great audiences, and finally, by his success as an instructor, establish a great intellectual movement, A short sketch, of the life and work of Abelarcl will show how this programme was accomplished.

It is difficult, by a mere perusal of Abelard's works, to understand the effect he produced upon his hearers by the force of his argumentation, whether studied or improvised, and by the ardor and animation of his eloquence, and the grace and attractiveness of his person. But the testimony of his contemporaries is unanimous ; even his adversaries themselves render justice to his high oratorical qualities. No one ever reasoned with more subtlety, or handled the dialectic tool with more address ; and assuredly, something of these qualities is to be found in the writings he has left us. But the intense life, the enthusiastic ardor which enlivened his discourses, the beauty of his face, and the charm of his voice cannot be imparted by cold manuscripts; Heloise, whose name is inseparably linked with that of her unfortunate husband, and whom Charles de Eemusat does not hesitate to call ^'the first of women"; ^ who, in any case, was a superior person of her time ; Heloise, who loved Abelard with " an immoderate love," ^ and who, under the veil of a religieuse and throughout the practice of devotional duties, remained faithful to him until death; Heloise said to him in her famous letter of 1136 : "Thou hast^ two things especially which could instantly win thee the hearts of all women : the charm

1 Charles de Remusat, Abelard. Paris, 1845. t. i, p. 262

2 ". . . te immoderato amore complexa sum," Abelardi Opera, edition Cousin, t. i, p. 74.

10 ABELAUD

thou knowest how to impart to thy voice in speaking, and in singing."

External gifts combined with intellectual qualities to make of Abelard an incomparable seducer of minds and hearts. Add to this an astonishing memory, a knowledge as profound as was compatible with the resources of his time, and a vast erudition which caused his contemporaries to consider him a master of universal knowledge.' It was not merely the weapons of a skilful but barren logic that he had recourse to when he desired to convince; nourished on the perusal of Latin orators and jjoets, he embellished his discourses with literary digressions, classical allusions, and quotations from Horace or from Vergil. A poet himself when at forty years of age he fell in love with Heloise, renewing his youth through love and repeating the drama of Faust, he composed love-songs in the common tongue, which became very popular.

We must not omit to signalize the intrepidity of his ardent character, always ready to attack or to defend, provoking controversy rather than seeking to aj^pease it; in a word, the adventurous and militant temper wherein one recognizes the innovator. Charles de R^musat represents Abelard before he was twenty, as *' wandering over the provinces, seeking masters and adversaries, going from controversy to controversy, a veritaVjle knight-arrant of philosophy."^

1 Abelard avow<i<l, however, tliat he did not know Greek and that he ha/J faile^l in the study of mathematics,

2 Abelard, in his first letter to Heloise, which is like the hist^jry of his life, hintoria calarnitatum, himself writes: " JJiver nag di&' jmtand/j pcrarahahxnH provin/'idH, peripixtMicorum lemulator fao tuH «Mm," AheUrrdi Opf^ro., p. 4.

I'ORERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 11

Later on, when in 1101 he dared to contradict and succeeded in refuting William of Champeaux, then at the height of his power and reigning as a sovereign in the school of the cloister of Notre Dame; and when, in 1114, he went to attack on his own ground, in his school at Laon, in the midst of his pupils, stupefied at such audacity, the old Anselm of Laon, himself a pupil of St. Anselm, and who at this epoch held "the sceptre of theolog}^," was he not armed with extraordinary courage, this young philosopher who, without other title than his genius, endowed by no one with the right to teach, avowing himself without a master, — sine magistro, as his enemies reproached him with being, — found in himself the needful inspiration to undertake the most formidable controversies and to triumph in them ?

Victory then accompanied and encouraged his efforts. But, when the hours of his disgrace arrived, w^hen the hostility of churchmen whom he had affrighted and troubled in their repose, arraigned him successively before two Councils, that of Soissons in 1121, and that of Sens in 1140, to listen to the condemnation of his heresies ; did he not give proof even in his defeat, of an energ}", a force of soul, rare at all times, but almost unknown in epochs of blind submission and theocratic terror ?

At Soissons he was not disconcerted, even in the midst of a fanatical populace who accused him of having preached that there were three Gods, on account of the interpretation he gave to the dogma of the Trinity, and who were on the point of stoning some of his disciples ; and he embarrassed his accusers by the boldness of his replies and his haughty countenance. Condemned notwithstanding, obliged to burn his books with his own hands, confined as a prisoner in the convent of St. Medard, it was only in appearance that he bowed before the indisputable authority of a sovereign tribunal ; in reality, trembling with rage under the yoke imposed upon him, ''bound," according to the expression of an author of the day, " like a wild rhinoceros," he persevered in his independent thought and his personal faith ; just as, though shut up in the cloister of Argenteuil, Heloise persevered in her love.

At Sens, grown old and tired, at odds with St. Bernard who occupied a commanding position in the Church, — with that man, superior likewise, but superior solely by the sanctity of his life and the ardor of his devotion, and who was, in a word, only " a monk," — Abelard, it is true, appeared to fail. Instead of defending himself, he retired, restricting himself to declaring that he recognized no judge but the Roman Pontiff. His persecutors published that he had been intimidated, seized with a miraculous confusion. Is it not more likely that, feeling himself condemned in advance before an assembly of openly hostile prelates, and unwilling to confess himself defeated, the rationalistic Christian, were it merely to retard his discomfiture, appeals to the Pope, as the rationalistic philosophers appeal later on to eternal truth and justice ?

The sketch I am making would be incomplete if it failed to note a final trait of Abelard's character : his confidence in himself, his presumptuous assurance. Abelard is not a studious man, devotinsr himself to

FOKERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 13

the search after truth in the silence and solitude of his chamber ; he is a combatant, eager for glory and for power. After the scandal of his amours with Heloise, after the atrocious mutilation to which he had been subjected, another man, less strongly tempered, would have thought of nothing but hiding his shame in retreat. But Abelard, in his ambitious activity, could not resign himself to repose, and a year after his cruel adventure, in 1120, he opened a new school in Champagne and there won again his past victories. " There was in this man," says Charles de Eemusat, " somewhat of the insolence of those natures born for command and royalty.'^ Greatly attached to his opinions, greatly in love with his own discernment, intoxicated moreover, as it were, with the enthusiastic homage of his pupils, he had none of the humility, nor even of the modesty which the habit of intellectual docility rendered easy to his contemporaries. He went so far as to write that he considered himself the only philosopher of his time ; ^ but for that matter, if he was wrong to say it, perhaps he was right in thinking it.

How can one be astonished that with such qualities Abelard gained an extraordinary ascendency over his age ; that, having become the intellectual ruler and, as it were, the dictator of the thought of the twelfth century, he should have succeeded in attracting to his chair and in retaining around it thousands of young men; the first germ of those assemblages of students who were to constitute the universities several years later ?

1 " . . . quumjam me solum in mundo superesse philosophum aBStimarem," Ahelardi Opera, t. i, p. 9.

14 ABSLABD

Abelard, in spite of the vicissitudes of his existence, waSj above all things, a professor.^ Let me recall in a few words, the principal stages in his career. I have already stated that by 1102 he had taught at Melun, then at Corbeil, from whence, nearer to Paris, ''he delivered the assault, so to say, on the citadel of the school of Notre Dame." This assault became still more vigorous when, in 1108, he established himself in Paris on the Mount of Ste. Genevieve, " that hill destined to become the Sinai of university instruction," where schools were already in existence which competed freely with the official school of the city. It was at this period that William of Champeaux, discouraged by the growing success of his pupil, definitely quitted the cloister of Notre Dame, at first to found, at the gates of Paris, a congregation which became the celebrated Abbey of St. Victor, but afterwards to become the Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne. He left the place free to his rival, and it is about 1113 that we find Abelard at last installed in the school of the city, reigning as master of instruction in a town which was already the intellectual capital of Europe, and realizing thus the dream of his youth : ad scholarum regimen adolescentulus aspirabam.^

This was the most brilliant period of his life: it lasted but a few years, being interrupted after 1118

1 It is not known at what date Abelard became a priest. He was probably not one at the time of his marriage with Heloise ; this is not proved, however. He has himself expressed the opinion that a priest may marry. Ahelardi Opera, t. i, p. 16.

2 "He obtained the chair of the cloister, to which he had long aspired, and he taught there at the same time theology and philosophy. Crevier, op. cit., t. i, p. 127."

by the scandal of his liaison with Heloise. But from 1120, after some months of meditation spent at the Abbey of St. Denis, he felt again the need for action ; he installed himself in the Priory of Maisoncelle, in Champagne, where, it is said, he was surrounded by three thousand students. Then, after new disturbances, after the condemnation pronounced by the Council of Soissons, after a veritable Ulysses's journey from convent to convent, he obtained from the King, Louis the Pat, and from his ministers, Stephen de Garlande and Suger, permission to establish himself in a retreat of his own choice. Eoyalty in the twelfth century, resuming the role and experiencing anew the inspirations of Charlemagne, seems from this period to have been conscious of its duties towards learning and scientiiic men; and the protection granted by the ministers of Louis the Fat to Abelard, persecuted by the Church, is the prelude to the privileges granted to the universities by the princes of the thirteenth century.

Thanks to the royal favor, Abelard was able to fix his residence without hindrance in a desert place belonging to the territory of Troyes, and there, in some fields which were given him, he built an oratory of stubble which he called the Paraclete, the Comforter. He had come there alone, save for one pupil. But his retreat was soon known ; students flocked to him anew, pursuing their regretted master even to the wilderness where he had hidden himself. " Cities and castles were deserted for this Thebaid of science. Tents were set up ; mud walls, covered with moss, rose to shelter the numerous disciples who slept on the grass and nourished themselves with rustic dishes and coarse bread." ^ The instruction given at this School of the Paraclete, marvellously opened in the midst of fields, was continued from 1122 to 1125. But this new success called forth new attacks which saddened all the latter part of Abelard's life. He was to reappear only once more, in 1136, in his chair at Paris, the first theatre of his glory, ardent as ever, in spite of his fifty-seven years, and followed still by the sympathy of his hearers. It was at this epoch that he had John of Salisbury ^ as a pupil, whose testimony is precious to recall. " I repaired," he says, " to the country of the Palatin ^ peripatetic, who was then presiding on Mount Ste. Genevieve, an illustrious doctor, admirable for everything. . . . There, at his feet, I received the first elements of the dialectic art, and, according to the measure of my feeble understanding, I gathered up, with all the avidity of my soul, everything that proceeded from his mouth."

Up to the last day of his teaching, then, Abelard was the uncontested master, the professor par excellence. In a time when there was neither publicity nor advertising, and renown could only be established slowly and from place to place by conversation and

1 Charles de Remusat, op. cit., p. 108.

2 John of Salisbury (1110-1174), an English monk, became secretary to St. Thomas Becket, afterwards to Alexander III, and finally Bishop of Chartres. He wrote numerous works, among others the Metalogicus, which is a plea for literary studies.

3 Abelard was born near Nantes, in the town of Pallet or Palais, whence the name of Palatin given him by John of Salisbury. It is known that "Abelard" is only a surname, the origin of which is much disputed. See Remusat, op. cit., p. 171.

oral accounts, he nevertheless acquired both gloraand popularity. Wherever he went, says Cousin,^ he seemed to carry reputation and a crowd along with him. He attracted such a vast number of hearers, not only from all parts of France, but even of Europe, that, as he says himself, the inns were not sufficient to contain them, nor the earth to feed them. " No idea can be given of the effect he produced in teaching philosophy, and never does any science seem to have had a more powerful propagandist. As the head of a school he recalls, if he does not efface, for brilliancy and ascendency the success of the great philosophers of Greece."^ But however flattering this comparison may be — for nobody dreams of making Abelard equal with Socrates or Plato — it still does injustice, nevertheless, to what was particularly characteristic in the great assemblages of men who thronged about the professor of the Middle Ages. The great philosophers of antiquity had only a very small number of pupils. Around Abelard there was a multitude of human beings ; there were more than five thousand pupils in his school at Paris. His school was open to every comer and entered by whoever willed, as is shown by the anecdote of a young student, the pupil of William of Champeaux, of whom the Church has made a saint, St. Gosvin, who, in 1108, desiring to try conclusions with Abelard, bravely entered the school on Mount Ste. Genevieve while the master was sx3eaking, and making a sign that he wished to say something, drew upon himself this apostrophe : " Mind you keep still and don't interrupt my lecture.''

1 Charles de Remusat, op. cit., p. 31.

^^ ABELARl'

graF

ni

It is not alone by the outward success of his scholastic apostolate that Abelard merits consideration as the precursor of the modern spirit and the promoter of the foundation of the universities ; it is also by his doctrine, or at least by his method. He may, in fact, be counted among the liberators of the human mind, and even, according to the expression of Brucker, '^ among the martyrs of philosophy." ^

In what, then, consisted the novelty of his opinions ? Abelard remains especially celebrated, among the historians of philosophy, for having taken an intermediate and sound position between the Realists and the Nominalists, between William of Charapeaux and Roscelinus ; ^ for having maintained that general ideas are neither independent entities nor mere words, but must be defined as concepts of the mind seizing the real relations of things. But whatever may be the value of this theory of Abelard, of this Conceptualism which was the doctrine of good sense, it is not in it that his real originality appears ; that consists, above all, in the application he made of reason to theology, in his Christian rationalism, which prepared the way for philosophical rationalism. "What Abelard taught that was most novel for his age," says

1 Brucker, Historia critica philosophise, t. iii, p. 704. Cousin does not hesitate to say that Abelard was " leader of a school and almost martyr of an opinion."

2 Roscelinus, a philosopher of the eleventh century, the chief of the Nominalists, horn in Brittany, like Ahelard, who had, it appears, followed his lectures: '' Magistri nostri Roscelini tarn insana sententia." {Oavrcujes inedlts, p. 471.)

Mme. Guizot, " was liberty, the right to consult reason and to listen to it alone. An almost involuntary innovator, he had methods that were still bolder than his doctrines, and principles whose range far outran the consequences at which he himself arrived. Hence, his influence is not to be sought for in the verities which he established, but in the impulse which he gave. He attached his name to none of those powerful ideas which act throughout the centuries, but he imparted to minds that impetus which perpetuates itself from generation to generation." ^

Assuredly, no one claims that Abelard was the first who, in the Middle Ages, had introduced dialectics into theology, reason into authority. In the ninth century, Scotus Erigena had already said : " Authority is derived from reason." Scholasticism, which is nothing but logic enlightening theology, an effort of reason to demonstrate dogma, had begun before Abelard ; but it was he who gave movement and life to the method by lending it his power and his renown. It was he above all who erected it into a principle and gave it a general application.

To estimate the independence of Abelard's thought, to comprehend how far he was in advance of his time, it is sufficient to recall the opposition he encountered among the representatives of tradition. " The human mind," said St. Bernard in his earliest denunciations of Abelard, "the human mind usurps all, no longei^ leaving anything to faith. ... It lays hands upon,' what is most high ; it searches that which is stronger