The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-03-16
LIEBESTOD

a BELARD did not come. For
IA hearing all this, says Abel
ard, the Canon and his kinsmen
we're of the opinion that had
played a trick on them, and had
taken an easy way 10 rid myself
of Heloise. making her a nun.
Whereat vehemently indignant,
and conspiring together against
me, on a certain night while l
slept in an inner room of my
lodging, having corrupted a Sery-
ant of mine with money, they
Punished me with a most cruel and
shameful vengeance, and one that
the world received with the
utmost anlazement; amputating,
to wit, those parts of my body
wherewith l had committed that
of which they complained.
Only so. short of murder. could
Fulbert prevent Abelard's ordina-
ton and success; it was a charac-
teraStic stroke of medieval brutality,
part of the same ferocity of those
still half barbarian souls who &C
cepted as unquestionable reality the
everlasting fires Of Hell. Abelard,
Inundated beyond bearing, fled to
the monastery of Saint-Denis, and
sought to hide from the world.
But his pupils followed him there,
and begged him not to discontinue
his instruction; and when he began
to lecture again, crowds larger than
ever before gathered about him.
His enemies were not pleased;
they brought before the council of
scissors, in 1921, an indictment of
Abelard for heresy, attesting his
book on the Divine Unity OF
Trinity" they held that he had re-
duced the Trinity to merely a trinity
of attributes-power wisdom, and
love; and in trying to prove Plato a
Christian, said Bernard, Abelard
had only proved himself heather.
The council condemned him, ordered
his book to be burned, and sem
fenced him to indefinite imprison-
ment in his monastery.
n
ID PLEASED after brief incarcer-
IN alton, he fled to a wild and
solitary wood near Troyes, and built
himself there a little oratory ii. e.,
a place of prayer, which he dedi-
Gated to the Paraclete-the Holy
Ghost; this was the first time a
church had been dedicated to the
third person Of the Trinity; and
was scandalized again.
when the scholars knew of this
retreat" he writes, they began to
hasten from all parts, and leaving
cities and towns, to inhabit the
wilderness, instead of their roomy
homes, to construct for themselves
little huts; instead of delicate viands
to live upon wild herbs and coarse
bread; instead of soft beds, to lay
down thatch for themselves and
straw" What picture of the
hunger for knowledge that was
putting an end to the Dark Ages!
Even into the wilderness persecu-
ton followed him. His foes would
not rest so long as he taught by
writing or by speech; they prevailed
upon a monastery in distant Brit
tany to call upon Abelard to come
and be their abbot; and when Abel
ard would have refused, his eccle-
siastical superior 6or he had now ir-
revocably taken the cowl, with VOWS
of chastity and obedience) COM
manded him to go.
Broken-hearted and aged before
his time, he left his students, and
found himself head of some monks
in a monastery built on almost
inaccessible rocks, far out into the
cold and gloom and moisture of the
sea.
The country was barbarous, and
the speech of the country strange
to me; the vile and intractable life
of these monks was known to all,
and the people were inhuman and
uncouth.
So, like a man who terrified by
a sword that is hanging over him,
daSheS toward a precipice, and
just as in the nick Of time he
avoids one death incurs another,
SO from one danger to another
knowingly bore myself, and there,
by the waves of the roaring ocean,
since the ultimate ends Of the
earth allowed me to flee no
farther often in my prayers re-
peated these words:
From the end of the earth will
I cry unto thee, who my heart is