Today I was trying to find out if Peter Abelard was actually convicted of heresy and had a bit of a struggle with this. Sites either were not very clear or were in huge academic detail that needed subscribing to. He was condemned by the Pope at least twice. Is that a conviction? The first heresy seemed to me to rather 'angels on the head of a pin' type of thing. The heresy of Sabellius who seemed to preach a non-Trinity form of God, where there weren't three forms of separate God, but Father, Son and Holy Spirit all different modes of God. (Is that not how I understand the Trinity anyway?)

His heretical book was burnt, but does that automatically mean he was convicted of heresy? And what was the punishment if you were? He went on to have his own monastery, I think. The general feeling seems to be that the charges were politically motivated, or motivated by jealousy.

I'm afraid I know nothing about Abelard, but I've always felt rather sorry for his and Heloise's little boy. Whatever were these parents thinking, calling their child after a scientific instrument - Astrolabe?

Astrolabe seems to have disappeared from the records quite early and is presumed to have died. I think I read he was brought up by his aunt. Quite a pretty name, but maybe more feminine sounding? Perhaps it was common or at least not unknown in France.

Abelard was censured for having "published" (made available for dissemination) a book examining the nature of the Holy Trinity without submitting it to the ecclesiastical authorities for approval beforehand but never stood trial for heresy. His punishment was therefore in accordance with Benedictine rules for aberrations on the part of members and one which, upon resigning his membership, he could simply walk away from. Which he did.

However much the authorities might have liked to have tried him for heresy at the time they were unable to do so without calling into question the system they themselves had devised for dissemination of ecclesiastical literature, which in modern terms had been "subcontracted" out to emergent universities and seminaries as well as monastic institutions. Abelard's notions about the trinity were in fact not too dissimilar to others which had already been published with their approval. We have only Abelard's own testimony to go on but it appears that your assessment of local rivalries and jealousies is probably the most accurate in trying to gauge the motives behind his censure at the time of his first arraignment. Abelard had effectively walked into an ongoing rivalry between two camps (who also figure coincidentally in the "Who Killed William Rufus?" murder mystery), namely that which was comprised of the followers of the influential French abbot Suger and that which was made up of the "school" established by Anselm during his self-imposed exile in France twenty years before. Suger, who was allegedly a good friend of Abelard, had excited huge opposition from his fellow ecclesiastics during his meteoric rise in political as well as religious terms, and moreover he enjoyed the protection and patronage of the royal court. The Anselm school was a group of vociferous anti-Sugerians who had the patronage and protection of the French cardinals and who were constantly pressing for a monopoly on the right to authenticate, control and draw revenues from doctrinal works aimed at the major market. When they saw Abelard, a Sugerian who had established a huge reputation in his own right, attempt to bypass them it would not have been long before they called in the big guns to stop him. However it appears the cardinals balked at pressing for a full accusation of heresy and were content to chastise him and ensure that the book was destroyed in this case.

nordmann wrote:

Abelard had effectively walked into an ongoing rivalry between two camps (who also figure coincidentally in the "Who Killed William Rufus?" murder mystery), namely that which was comprised of the followers of the influential French abbot Suger and that which was made up of the "school" established by Anselm during his self-imposed exile in France twenty years before. Suger, who was allegedly a good friend of Abelard, had excited huge opposition from his fellow ecclesiastics during his meteoric rise in political as well as religious terms, and moreover he enjoyed the protection and patronage of the royal court.

Anselm was certainly always one for a fight whether in France or England. In the latter case, apart from his bust up with William Rufus, there was also the York v Canterbury dispute whereby archbishops of Canterbury have periodically sought to assert their primacy over their counterparts in York and have been resisted in kind.

One of Canterbury’s most famous adopted sons, Anselm was just such an archbishop and indeed is often viewed as the originator of the ‘Canterbury must be boss’ tradition. It’s believed that Anslem identified closely with his predecessor of 500 years earlier, Augustine the first bishop of Canterbury. Augustine had been so successful in his mission to convert the heathen English to Christianity that by the time of his death he had founded 3 dioceses – Canterbury, Rochester and London. As his own diocese Canterbury was the senior, he was deemed archbishop of the nascent province. A 2-province England had been envisioned by Augustine’s patron Pope Gregory even before Augustine set off on his mission. Gregory saw the former Roman cities Londinium and Eboracum (London and York) as the obvious choices for such a partition. They were the respective capitals of the provinces of Britannia Superior (southern Roman Britain) and Britannia Inferior (northern Roman Britain). Neither Augustine, however, nor any of his successors chose to relocate the southern archbishopric to London and so it remains in Canterbury.
 
Not content with Canterbury lording it over London, however, Anselm wanted to extend his authority over the whole country. His high-handed approach to the 2-province question even saw him seek papal approval for his claim to the primacy of all England. This also gives an insight into his sense of self. He was a highly intelligent player and supremely confident not only in his intellectual capacity but also in his administrative abilities. With such a formidable opponent it’s not surprising that Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis was on the back foot himself from the start - let alone poor Abelard.

Although I do love Canterbury and its cathedral, I tend to be a bit of a traitor to Kent in the provincial rivalry thing. I find the Primate of England/ Primate of All England distinction unbelievably petty and I tend to stick up for York in this wherever possible. Currently that’s not that difficult. For instance, during last month’s Queen’s Jubilee service of thanksgiving, we were spared the prospect of the deeply depressing Justin Welby (Archbishop of Canterbury) boring us all to sleep but instead were treated to the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell’s jolly sermon. What a breath of fresh air that was. In fact, I don’t even know why there needs to be 2 provinces at all. Why should the bishop of Canterbury hold sway over Bath & Wells for example? And why should the bishop of York hold sway over Durham for that matter? If the Church of England requires an archbishop or a primus inter pares, then surely the longest serving bishop would suffice in that role. Either that or else the position could varyingly rotate among the dioceses.

All this reminded me of the book I once read called Heloise and Abelard by James Burge, so I got it out the library today, though I haven't started it yet.

Vizzer : Don't forget there was a third Archbishopric for a brief period.

My book now (quite early on) is talking about historians now speaking of the "twelfth-century renaissance" and "twelfth century humanism". "These phrases are now an admission that - contrary to Petrarch's opinions - various ideas and attitudes were becoming current that were once thought to have existed only much later. Many scholars now consider that in Abelard's lifetime the spirit of the age underwent a transformation; the medieval world view was readjusted to a more human scale. It showed itself first in the way people thought about religion...God had been an aall-powerful and capricious agent of the supernatural, visiting retribution on humanity...But now religion was starting to be seen as a personal experience: when Abelard writes about good and evil, for exampls, they are not defined in terms of damnation for wrong-doing but as the correct and incorrect responses to the love that God spontaneously gives to humanity. Medieval theologians were starting to talk about the relationship between human beings and God as kind of friendship...At its best, being part of a monastery must have like being a member of a club. Shared hardship in a joint enterprise can draw people together into a wonderfully cohesive unit - actors who work on the same production, crews who race the same ship, even soldiers who serve in the same unit can all attest to this phenomenon."
(I would have thought ESPECIALLY the last rather than EVEN.)

Vizzer wrote:

Not content with Canterbury lording it over London, however, Anselm wanted to extend his authority over the whole country. His high-handed approach to the 2-province question even saw him seek papal approval for his claim to the primacy of all England. This also gives an insight into his sense of self. He was a highly intelligent player and supremely confident not only in his intellectual capacity but also in his administrative abilities. With such a formidable opponent it’s not surprising that Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis was on the back foot himself from the start - let alone poor Abelard.

Anselm seems to have been a bit of a prat, all things considered, dead brainy, but still a prat. Didn't he start the whole atonement thing -  a theory surely so opposed to the simple message of Jesus of Nazareth it makes you want to weep? No wonder, as Caro's book suggests, there was an attempted "transformation" in thinking - "that 12th century humanism". Poor Abelard and his like - with their notions of humanistic "love" between God and men (and women) - they really didn't stand a chance, did they? The Princes of the Church, or, later, the nuttier of the Protestant lot, were not too keen on such nonsense taking hold. What's love got to do with anything when you can have fear and control? That nasty atonement stuff was ideal for that (didn't the Calvinists just love it?) - and it's still trotted out, of course, to the unwary. I was once asked outside John Lewis's in Exeter (just before Christmas 2019, so nearly 1000 years after Anselm) whether I had been "washed in the blood of the Lamb".  There really is no answer to that, but it does put one off rather. I just smiled politely, wished them a Happy Christmas, and went about my shopping. No point arguing, especially when no one, including myself, really understands any of it.

But I do like the humanists, ancient or modern. I think Jesus was a good humanist, but that's another story (or thread).