Bernard's opponent in theological contro versy, Abelard, is the other famous intellectual genius of the century. He is remembered for his scholarship and his educational influence, hut mainly for the romance in his life. Like so many errant geniuses of France, Abelard was born (circa, 1079) in tBrittany, just com ing of age for his life work in our century. He was destined to a military career, but preferred to become a wandering scholar, hearing the lec tures of many of. the renowned teachers of the day. Shortly after the beginning of the cen tury he was at Paris for some time and occu pied a chair in the cathedral school, the fore runner of the university, where he taught dia lectics with great success. He became the idol of Paris and, as he says himself, had the world at his feet. In the midst of this adulation came the romance which ruined his career. The popular professor was engaged by Canon Ful bert to give lessons to his niece, Heloise. She was deeply intellectual and became a devoted admirer of her brilliant teacher. She was hand some and before long the teacher was forgotten in the lover. There was a secret wedding after the birth of their son, and Heloise retired to the nunnery of Argenteuil and Abelard gave up his professional career. He was but in minor or ders at the time and now he became a Benedic tine monk in the abbey of Saint Denis. He had a rather stormy career after this, one phase of which is touched upon in the paragraphs with regard to Saint Bernard, but the end of his life was spent in peace at Cluny. He was buried at the Paraclete, the nunnery of which Heloise was the abbess. Their remains are now said to be in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise (Paris), where their tomb is a place of senti mental pilgrimage. The surprise is to find a romance with all the 'modern elements working itself out over seven centuries ago.
fleloise was not yet 20 when she met Abe lard, a man of nearly 40, at the summit of his career, and was won by his prestige and his in tellectuality. Later in life she attracted the at tention of Peter the Venerable of Cluny and of Saint Bernard for her intellectual qualities, and the rules which she gave to her nunnery, the Paraclete, became the basis of the constitutions of many monasteries for women. She had great administrative power and her letters are a revelation of a wonderful mother heart, com bined with an intellect of high order and a lit erary quality usually supposed to have developed only much later in history than the 12th cen tury. The fault of her youth was amply ex piated and she came to be looked up to as a great good woman whose advice on important questions was worth having and who was turned to by many of her contemporaries because of their thorough appreciation of her excellent judgment and her unselfish character.
The century had its intellectual life, many of the products of which have survived, mainly in the monasteries. Citeaux, Clairvaux, Cluny, have already been mentioned and the abbey of Saint Victor founded by William of Champeaux, archdeacon of Notre Dame, deserves a place be side these. William after lecturing to crowds of students in Paris, relinquished his chair and retired to a small hermitage dedicated to Saint Victor near the city, where he was followed by a great many of his pupils, Abelard among them, and was persuaded to take up his lectures again. This was the origin of the famous abbey and school of Saint Victor. With the schools of Saint Genevieve and Notre Dame, it afterward formed the basis of the University of Paris. Among Its most distinguished scholars were many known only by• their Christian names and distinguished by the appellative "of Saint Vic There was Hugh of Saint Victor, termed the Saint Aupstine of his time because of his work in philosophy and theology and the breadth of his scholarship, and Richard of Saint Victor, a Scotchman, called the "mystic doctor* because of the lofty spirituality of his writings; then Adam of Saint Victor, whether a Breton or a Briton is not known, who wrote hymns which are among the greatest of the time, and this is the supreme period of hymn writing in history. Archbishop Trench de clared Adam of Saint Victor °the foremost among the sacred Latin 'poets of the Middle Ages? Other Saint Victorians were Peter Comestor (d. 1178), the historian, Peter Loin bard (1100-1164), the famous Magister Sen tentiarum, whose book was the basis of scholas ticism and the subject of so many commen taries; Thomas the abbot of Saint Andrews, to whom Saint Francis sent young Saint Antony of Padua for his theological studies, and many others. Few schools in history have had so
many pupils of enduring distinction in a cor responding space of time. The abbey was the centre of the intellectual life of Europe at this time and the Mecca for many distinguished visitors, not a few of whom came to remain for some time. The English were particularly interested in it, and the second abbot, Achard of Saint Victor, was either an Englishman or was related very intimately to the Normans in England at that time.
The hero of the century in the eyes of all his contemporaries and for centuries later was Thomas a Becket, the martyr archbishop of Canterbury (1118-70). A legend makes his mother a princess from the East who met his father on the crusades. Kept in duress by her father until a Becket's return to England, she escaped surveillance and followed with only his name to guide her. She found her lover to become a Christian wife and the mother of Thomas a Becket, later the archbishop. He was a brilliant student at Merton College, Oxford, and at Paris, and at 22 entered the service of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury. He became a favorite of Theobald who sent him to study civil and canon law at Bologne and Auxerre. When Henry II succeeded Stephen as king of England, he made Thomas a Becket his chan cellor at the age of 36. The king and his chan cellor were said to have "but one heart and one mind? When Archbishop Theobald died in 1161, Henry selected Thomas as his successor. Thomas would have refused the offer saying know your plans for the Church. You will assert claims which I, as archbishop, must needs oppose? Henry insisted. The inevitable divi sion of opinion foreseen by Thomas occurred, owing to the king's ambition, and the arch bishop refusing to yield had, like many an other archbishop, to go into exile. Reconcilia tion took place and Thomas returned to Eng land but the disagreement as to Church and state rights recurred and the king said impa tiently, before his nobles in Normandy, "Who will rid me of this troublesome Churchman?" Four knights immediately left the royal pres ence, crossed the channel to Canterbury, and finding the archbishop in his cathedral at ves pers, slew him before the altar. The popular outcry over this bloody deed was intense. The Icing shocked at the unlooked for effect of his hot words did public penance, and for the rest of the Middle Ages and until King Henry VIII brought about the separation from Rome, the shrine of Saint Thomas at Canterbury was one of the most famous and one of the most visited in Europe. Many thousands of pilgrims found their way there every year. Chaucer has made the Canterbury pilgrimages live for all the after time though the destruction of the shrine put an end to them four centuries ago.
The 12th century witnessed a climax of the development of the right of sanctuary or the right of asylum as it is also called, which meant so much for the beginning of the reign of law instead of violence. It consisted in the privilege enjoyed by all those who were persecuted and were in danger of violence, whether the perse cution was just or unjust, of flying to a church where they were guaranteed immunity against capture or violence of any sort on the part of their pursuers. This privilege endured so long as they remained on sacred ground. In the meantime the ecclesiastical authorities wider whose protection the fugitive had come used their influence to secure justice or at least to calm the passion of the pursuer. What was needed above all was time and this was secured by this means. This right had been exercised during preceding centuries to very good effect, but a number of incidents during the 12th cen tury shows that it was coming to be recognized by all, even by rulers, and that as a consequence many acts of injustice, some of them irrepara ble, which would have occurred if the fugitive were without refuge, were prevented. This right of sanctuary was without discrimination as to the social condition of the refugees and this fact had much to do with making social barriers less decisive than they had been.