Pierre Abelard (1079-1142), the eldest son of a rather noble father, was born in Pallet, a village near Nantes, and received a very good upbringing. Fascinated by the desire to devote himself to scientific work, he gave up the rights of primogeniture and the military career of a noble man. Abelard's first teacher was Roscellin, the founder of nominalism; he then listened to lectures by the famous Parisian professor Guillaume Champeau and became a researcher of the system of realism he founded. But she soon ceased to satisfy him. Pierre Abelard developed a special system of notions - conceptualism, the average between realism and nominalism - and began to argue against the Champagne system; his objections were so convincing that Champagne himself modified his concepts on some very important issues. But Shampoo was angry at Abelard for this argument and began to envy the fame he had acquired with his dialectical talent; the envious and irritated teacher became a fierce enemy of the brilliant thinker.
Abelard was a professor of theology and philosophy in Melun, then in Corbelle, at the St. Genevieve School in Paris; his fame grew; by the appointment of Champeau as Bishop of Chalonix, Pierre Abelard became (1113) head teacher at the school of the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary (Notre Dame de Paris) and became the most famous scholar of his time. Paris was then a center of philosophical and theological science; young men and women of old age came together from all over Western Europe to listen to Abelard's lectures on theology and philosophy in a clear, elegant language. Among them was Arnold Bresciansky.
A few years after Pierre Abelard began lecturing at the Temple School of Our Lady, he suffered a misfortune that gave his name an even greater romantic fame than his scholarly one. Canon Fulbert invited Abelard to live in his house and give lessons to his seventeen-year-old niece Eloise, a beautiful and extremely gifted girl. Abelard fell in love with her and she fell in love with him. He wrote songs about his love and composed melodies for them. In them he showed himself a great poet and a good composer. They quickly gained popularity and discovered Fulbert's secret love for his niece and Abelard. He wanted to stop it. But Abelard took Eloise to Brittany. There she had a son. Abelard married her. But the married man could not be a spiritual dignitary; in order not to hinder Abelard's career, Eloise hid her marriage and, returning to her uncle's house, said that she was a mistress, not Abelard's wife. Fulbert, outraged at Abelard, came with a few people to his room and told him to dig him up. Pierre Abelard went to St. Denis Abbey. Eloise cut her hair in a nun's hair (1119) at the Arzhanteisky monastery.
After a few moments Abelard, giving in to the students' requests, resumed his lectures. But orthodox theologians raised persecution against him. They found that in his treatise "Introduction to Theology" explains the dogma about the Trinity not as the church teaches, and accused Abelard before the Archbishop of Reims in heresy. The Council, which took place in Suasson (1121) under the chairmanship of the papal legate, condemned Abelard's treatise for burning and his imprisonment in the monastery of St. Medard. But the harsh sentence aroused strong displeasure in the French clergy, many of whose dignitaries were disciples of Abelard. Robot forced the legate to allow Pierre Abelard to return to St. Denis Abbey. But he brought on himself the enmity of St. Denis monks by his discovery that Dionysius, the founder of their abbey, is not Dionysius Areopagitus, a student of the Apostle Paul, and another saint, who lived much later. Their anger was so great that Abelar fled from them. He withdrew to the desert area near Nozhan on the Seine. Hundreds of disciples followed him there, built huts for themselves in the woods near the chapel dedicated to Abelar Paraklet, the Comforter who leads to the truth.
But there was a new persecution of Pierre Abelard; his fiercest enemies were Bernard Clairvoyant and Norbert. He wanted to flee France. But the monks of St. Gildes de Ruys in Brittany chose him as their abbot (1126). He gave the Paraquettes monastery to Eloise: she settled there with her nuns; Abelard helped her with advice on how to manage her affairs. He spent ten years in St. Gilles Abbey, trying to soften the monks' rough mores, then returned to Paris (1136) and began lecturing at St. Genevieve's School.
Once again irritated by their success, Pierre Abelard's enemies, and in particular Bernard Clervossky's enemies, stirred up a new crackdown on him. They chose from his compositions places where thoughts that disagreed with the generally accepted opinions were expressed, and resumed the accusation of heresy. At Sens, Bernard was the prosecutor of Abelard; the prosecutor's arguments were weak, but his influence was powerful; the cathedral obeyed Bernard's authority and declared Abelard a heretic. The convict appealed to his father. But the pope was totally dependent on Bernard, his
