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The Council of Sens (1141): Abelard, Bernard, and the Fear of Social Upheaval
Author(s): Constant J. Mews

Source: Speculum , Apr., 2002, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Apr., 2002), pp. 342-382
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of
America
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3301325
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The Council of Sens (1141):
Abelard, Bernard, and the Fear
of Social Upheaval
By Constant J. Mews
In cities and castles, darkness is being spread in place of light; everywhere poison is being
put forward to everybody in place of honey, or rather in honey.... A new Gospel is
being forged for peoples and communities, a new faith is being propounded, a founda-
tion that is different from what has been established. There is disputation that is immoral
about virtues and vices, unfaithful about the sacraments of the church, and neither simple
nor sober about the depths of the Holy Trinity; rather everything is served up to us as
perversity, everything beyond what is normal and different from what we accept. Goliath
[1 Kings 17.41] has advanced with his tall body, fortified with his noble weapons of
war, with his shield bearer, Arnold of Brescia, going before him. Armor is joined to
armor, and there is not a breath that flows through them [job 41.7]. A bee that was in
France has hissed to a bee from Italy, and they assembled as one against the Lord and
his anointed [Isa. 7.18].... Goliath, therefore, standing as one with his shield bearer
between both sides, shouts against the armies of Israel, challenges the ranks of the saints,
all the more boldly as he thinks David is not there.'
I am indebted to the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Monash University, Australia, for
providing the resources to pursue the research presented in this paper, as well as to the Delaware Valley
Medieval Association for the opportunity to present and refine its themes. I am also very grateful to
Professor R. Volpini (Rome), as well as to Professors Pietro Zerbi (Milan) and Ferruccio Gastaldelli
(Macerata), for alerting me to some important issues of chronology.
i Bernard, Epistola (hereafter Ep.) 189, to Pope Innocent II, Sancti Bernardi Opera (hereafter SBOp),
ed. Jean Leclercq et al., 8 vols. (Rome, 1957-77), 8:13-14: "Urbibus et castellis ingeruntur pro luce
tenebrae, pro melle vel potius in melle venenum passim omnibus propinatur.... Novum cuditur po-
pulis et gentibus Evangelium, nova proponitur fides, fundamentum aliud ponitur praeter id quod
positum est. De virtutibus et vitiis non moraliter, de sacramentis Ecclesiae non fideliter, de arcano
sanctae Trinitatis non simpliciter nec sobrie disputatur; sed cuncta nobis in perversum, cuncta praeter
solitum, et praeterquam accepimus, ministrantur. Procedit Golias procero corpore, nobili illo suo bel-
lico apparatu circummunitus, antecedente quoque ipsum armigero eius Arnaldo de Brixia. Squama
squamae coniungitur, et nec spiraculum incedit per eas. Siquidem sibilavit apis quae erat in Francia
api de Italia, et convenerunt in unum adversus Dominum et adversus Christum eius.... Stans ergo
Golias una cum armigero suo inter utrasque acies, clamat adversus phalangas Israel exprobratque
agminibus sanctorum, eo nimirum audacius quo sentit David non adesse." References to Bernard's
letters will hereafter be to the volume and page of Leclercq's edition and to the volume and page of
the richly annotated Latin-Italian edition-translation prepared by Ferruccio Gastaldelli, Opere di San
Bernardo, 6: Lettere, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986-87). Bruno Scott James translates all the letters from the
Mabillon edition, but with a different numbering: The Letters of Bernard of Clairvaux (London, 1953),
reissued with an introduction by Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1998). Leclercq's edition
of Epp. 1-41 is reproduced alongside a French translation by Henri Rochais, with an introduction
and notes by Monique Duchet-Suchaux, in Bernard de Clairvaux, Lettres, 1, Sources Chretiennes 425
(Paris, 1997). The Mabillon edition, reprinted in PL 182:67-716, is still of value, as it includes some
important letters relating to Abelard not included by Leclercq in his edition.
342 Speculum 77 (2002)

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The Council of Sens 343
This image of Goliath challenging the armies of Israel provided Bernard of Clair-
vaux (1090/91-1153) with a richly emotive way to describe to Pope Innocent II
how Peter Abelard (1079-1142) challenged Christian orthodoxy at the Council
of Sens. By and large, this is how that assembly has been remembered over the
centuries-as the occasion for a mythic struggle between two of the most famous
personalities of the age.2 Abelard, then in his early sixties, was celebrated for a
scandalous past and a brilliant intellect, while Bernard, more than ten years
2 The key early studies are those of Deutsch (1880; n. 9 below), Vacandard (1891; n. 10 below),
and Meyer (1898; n. 14 below). From the last fifty years certain studies may be singled out, in chro-
nological order: L. Nicolau d'Olwer, "Sur quelques lettres de St Bernard, avant ou apres le concile de
Sens?" Melanges Saint Bernard (Dijon, 1954), pp. 100-108; Arno Borst, "Abalard und Bernhard,"
Historisches Zeitschrift 186 (1958), 497-526; Raymond Klibansky, "Peter Abailard and Bernard of
Clairvaux: A Letter by Abailard," Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 5 (1961), 1-28; John R. Som-
merfeldt, "Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux," Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts and
Letters 46 (1961), 493-501; L. Grill, "Die neunzehn 'Capitula' Bernhards von Clairvaux gegen Abe-
lard," Historisches Jahrbuch 80 (1961), 230-39; M.-B. Carra de Vaux Saint-Cyr, "Disputatio catho-
licorum patrum adversus dogmata Petri Abaelardi," Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques
47 (1963), 205-20; Jean Jolivet, "Sur quelques critiques de la theologie d'Abelard," Archives d'histoire
doctrinale et litt&aire du moyen age 30 (1963), 7-51; A. Victor Murray, Abelard and St. Bernard: A
Study in Twelfth Century "Modernism" (Manchester, Eng., 1967); Eligius-Marie Buytaert, "Thomas
of Morigny and the 'Apologia' of Abelard," Antonianum 42 (1967), 25-54; idem, "The Anonymous
Capitula haeresum Petri Abaelardi and the Synod of Sens, 1140," Antonianum 43 (1968), 419-60;
Jean Leclercq, "Les formes successives de la lettre-traite de Saint Bernard contre Abelard," Revue
benedictine 78 (1968), 87-105, and "Les lettres de Guillaume de Saint-Thierry a Saint Bernard," Revue
benedictine 79 (1969), 375-91, reprinted in Jean Leclercq, Recueil d'etudes sur Saint Bernard et ses
ecrits, 4 (Rome, 1987), pp. 265-83 and 349-70 respectively; D. E. Luscombe, The School of Peter
Abelard: The Influence of Abelard's Thought in the Early Scholastic Period, Cambridge Studies in
Medieval Life and Thought, n.s., 14 (Cambridge, Eng., 1969), pp. 103-42; A. Babolin, Bernardo di
Chiaravalle: Le lettere contro Pietro Abelardo (Padua, 1969); Edward F. Little, "Bernard and Abelard
at the Council of Sens, 1140," in Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Presented to Dom Jean Leclercq,
Cistercian Studies Series 23 (Washington, D.C., 1973), pp. 55-71; idem, "The Source of the Capitula
of Sens of 1140," Studies in Medieval Cistercian History, 2, ed. J. R. Sommerfeldt, Cistercian Studies
Series 24 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1976), pp. 87-91; idem, "Relations between St. Bernard and Abelard
before 1139," in Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Commemorating the Eighth Centenary of His
Canonization, ed. M. Basil Pennington, Cistercian Studies Series 28 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1977), pp.
155-68; T. J. Renna, "Abelard versus Bernard: An Event in Monastic History," Citeaux: Commentarii
Cistercienses 27 (1976), 189-202; idem, "St. Bernard and Abelard as Hagiographers," Citeaux: Com-
mentarii Cistercienses 29 (1978), 41-59; Jean Leclercq, "Autour de la correspondance de S. Bernard,"
in Sapientiae doctrina: Melanges de theologie et de litt&rature m'dievales offerts a~ Dom Hildebrand
Bascour O.S.B. (Louvain, 1980), pp. 185-98, reprinted in Leclercq, Recueil d'etudes, 4:335-48; Lo-
thar Kolmer, "Abaelard und Bernhard von Clairvaux in Sens," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fiir
Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 98 (1981), 121-47; Nikolaus M. Haring, "Thomas von
Morigny: Disputatio catholicorum patrum adversus dogmata Petri Abaelardi," Studi medievali, 3rd
ser., 22 (1981), 299-376; Jacques Verger and Jean Jolivet, Bernard-Abelard ou le cloitre et l'ecole
(Brussels, 1982); Constant J. Mews, "The Lists of Heresies Imputed to Peter Abelard," Revue bene-
dictine 95 (1985), 73-110, reprinted in Mews, Abelard and His Legacy, Collected Studies Series 704
(London, 2001), and Petri Abaelardi Opera theologica III, ed. Eligius-Marie Buytaert and Constant
J. Mews, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaeualis (hereafter CCCM) 13 (Turnhout, 1987),
pp. 277-92; G. B. Winkler, "Bernhard und Abaelard: Weisheit Gottes-Weisheit der Welt," in Fest-
schrift fir Joseph Ratzinger (St. Ottilien, 1987), pp. 729-38; G. Boss, "Le combat d'Abelard," Cahiers
de civilisation medivale 31 (1988), 7-27; and Fiorella Vergani, "Sententiam vocum seu nominum
non caute theologiae admiscuit: Ottone di Frisinga di fronte ad Abelardo," Aevum 63 (1989), 193-
224. For the papers of Zerbi, see n. 31 below.

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344 The Council of Sens
younger, was at the height of his influence as a preacher. The confrontation be-
tween the two men at Sens has often been interpreted as a clash between inno-
vation and tradition, the questioning culture of the schools confronting an older,
monastic way of thinking, characterized by respect for religious authority and
monastic tradition.3 Yet does this really explain the intensity of Bernard's rhetoric
about the threat presented to the church by Peter Abelard and his "shield bearer,"
Arnold of Brescia (d. 1155)? Why did Bernard of Clairvaux evoke such apoca-
lyptic language to describe the threat presented by the unlikely alliance of a teacher
with a preacher normally identified with the Italian communes rather than with
the schools of Paris?
Bernard's principal objections to Abelard's arguments were theological in na-
ture. In his treatise to Pope Innocent II on the errors of Abelard (Ep. 190), written
at the behest of William of Saint-Thierry, Bernard concentrated on four proposi-
tions that seemed self-evidently heretical in nature: that while God the Father was
full power, God the Son was only "a certain power" and the Holy Spirit "no
power at all"; that the Holy Spirit was not of the substance of the Father and Son;
that Christ did not come to free humanity from the yoke of the devil; and that
omnipotence belonged to the Father alone.4 Bernard attached to his treatise a list
of nineteen controversial assertions, such as about original sin, the power given
to the apostles to forgive sin, and the nature of sin, but concentrated his attention
on Abelard's claims about the Trinity and the nature and purpose of redemption.
Bernard's theological concerns, however, had an important political dimension.
He was troubled by the potential of Abelard's teachings to tear the church apart,
in a schism as serious as that provoked by the rival claims of Anacletus 11 (1131 -
38) and Innocent 11 (1131-43) to the papal office:
We have escaped the roar of Peter the Lion, occupying the seat of Simon Peter; but we
have struck against Peter of the Dragon, attacking the faith of Simon Peter... But in
all these things he glories that he has exposed the sources of learning to the cardinals
and clerics of the curia, that he has entrusted books and teachings to the hands and
breasts of the Romans, and that he has taken them into the protection of his error, for
which he ought to be judged and condemned.5
3 Of particular influence in promoting the theme that "monastic" theology, based on an experiential
reading of Scripture, is radically different from "Scholastic" theology has been Jean Leclercq, The Love
of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Catherine Misrahi (New York, 1961). For a sophisticated
review of the debate provoked by this thesis, see Ferruccio Gastaldelli, "Teologia monastica, teologia
scolastica e lectio divina," Analecta Cisterciensia 46 (1990), 25-63. One of many surveys based around
these two approaches is Thomas Head, "'Monastic' and 'Scholastic' Theology: A Change of Para-
digm? " in Paradigms in Medieval Thought Applications in Medieval Disciplines, ed. Nancy van Deusen
and Alvin E. Ford, Mediaeval Studies 3 (Lewiston, N.Y., 1990), pp. 127-41. The presence of "scho-
lastic" texts within monastic libraries is underlined by Constant J. Mews, "Monastic Educational
Culture Revisited: The Witness of Zwiefalten and the Hirsau Reform," in Medieval Monastic Edu-
cation, ed. George Ferzoco and Carolyn Muessig (London, 2000), pp. 182-97.
4Ep. 190 (SBOp 8:17-40); see also Mews, "The Lists of Heresies," pp. 108-9.
5 Ep. 330 (SBOp 8:267-68; 2:364): "Evasimus rugitum Petri Leonis, sedem Simonis Petri occupan-
tem; sed Petrum Draconis incurrimus, fidem Simonis Petri impugnantem.... Sed in his omnibus glo-
riatur quod cardinalibus et clericis curiae scientiae fontes aperuerit, quod manibus et sinibus Roma-
norum libros et sententias incluserit, et in tutelam erroris sui assumit eos, a quibus iudicari debet, et
damnari." On the relationship between Ep. 330 and Ep. 189, see below, n. 119.

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While Bernard's suspicion of excessive reliance on

comment, the political dimension of the controv
ology has attracted less attention. In a classic study, published in 1980, Robert-
Henri Bautier argued that the vicissitudes of Abelard's early career were closely
related to the political fortunes of Stephen of Garlande, archdeacon of Paris, royal
chancellor and seneschal of France, 1120-1127/28.6 The political context of Ab-
elard's later career demands similar attention. The Council of Sens needs to be
seen as marking a key stage in the institutionalization of the process by which
heresy was identified.7 The circumstances surrounding the calling of the council
have never been fully clear, however, in part because of uncertainty surrounding
exactly when it took place.
THE DATE OF THE COUNCIL OF SENS
The traditional date assigned by most scholars to the Council of Sens has been
the octave of Pentecost (June 2), 1140.8 S. Martin Deutsch questioned the received
tradition in a pioneering study published in 1880, in which he assigned the council
to 1141, and argued that Bernard's behavior in condemning Abelard had a po-
litical dimension.9 The acceptance of Deutsch's arguments by the editors of the
Regesta pontificum Romanorum stung the abbe Elphege Vacandard, a staunch
defender of Bernard, into defending the traditional chronology.10 He based his
argument on two passages in particular: the assertion in the Premonstratensian
chronicle that the council took place in 1140 and a phrase of Peter the Venerable
that Abelard become a monk of Cluny "in the last years of his life," which he
glossed as implying that Abelard had spent more than one whole year there.1"
Vacandard considered that the letter that William of Saint-Thierry sent to Bernard
6 Robert-Henri Bautier, "Paris au temps d'Abelard," in Abeard en son temps, ed. Jean Jolivet (Paris,
1981), pp. 21-77, reprinted in Etudes sur la France capetienne: De Louis VI aux fils de Philippe le
Bel (London, 1992).
7Jiirgen Miethke considers this theme in his "Theologenprozesse in der ersten Phase ihrer institu-
tionellen Ausbildung: Die Verfahren gegen Peter Abaelard und Gilbert von Poitiers," Viator 6 (1975),
87-116; this theme is also implicit in the study of Peter Godman, The Silent Masters: Latin Literature
and Its Censors in the High Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J., 2000).
8 See Duchesne's notes to Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, ed. Martin Marrier (Paris, 1614), reprinted in
PL 189, and to Petri Abaelardi ... Heloysae ... Opera . . ., ed. A. Duchesne and F. d'Amboise (Paris,
1616), reprinted in PL 178:174D; the notes of Mabillon (1687) are reprinted in PL 182:319B.
9 S. Martin Deutsch, "Abalards Verurteilung zu Sens, 1141: Nach den Quellen kritisch dargestellt,"
in Symbolae Joachimicae: Festschrift des Koniglichen Joachimsthalschen Gymnasiums, 2 vols. (Berlin,
1880), 2:1-54, also published independently as Die Synode von Sens 1141 und die VerurteilungAbae-
lards (Berlin, 1880); see also his Peter Abalard: Ein kritischer Theologe des zwoilften Jahrhunderts
(Leipzig, 1883).
10 Elphege Vacandard, "Chronologie abelardienne: La date du concile de Sens: 1140," Revue des
questions historiques 50 (1891), 235-45, summarized in Vie de Saint Bernard, abbe de Clairvaux, 2
vols. (Paris, 1895), 2:145 n. 1. Vacandard had previously published Abeard, sa lutte avec Saint Ber-
nard, sa doctrine, sa methode (Paris, 1881).
11 Ep. 115, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1967),
1:307 and 2:177. He also referred to a brief comment in the Continuatio Valcellensis (ca. 1163) that
the vision of Tournai occurred in 1140, without noting that much information in this thirteenth-century
chronicle was dependent on the Premonstratensian continuation of Sigebert; see nn. 30 and 151 below.

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of Clairvaux, alerting him to Abelard's teaching, must have been composed during
Lent 1139 and that the campaign gained momentum during the fifteen months
between Easter (April 23) 1139 and June 2, 1140. According to this chronology,
William contacted Bernard before Arnold of Brescia, expelled from Italy by Pope
Innocent II during the Second Lateran Council (April 1139), arrived in Paris and
attached himself to Peter Abelard on the Montagne Sainte-Genevieve.12 Vacandard
assumed that the papal edicts condemning Abelard as a heretic and ordering both
Abelard and Arnold of Brescia to be held in confinement, dated simply as July 16,
were issued in 1140.13 After Wilhelm Meyer accepted Vacandard's arguments,
most scholars who have written about the Abelard-Bernard debate accepted an
1140 date without further question.14 They often imagined that Abelard spent the
last eighteen months of his life as a monk of Cluny, in fitting calm to a turbulent
life, composing (but not completing) his Collationes, or Dialogue of a Philosopher
with a Jew and a Christian.15 The suggestion of Giles Constable in 1967 that the
council occurred in 1140, but the papal condemnation in July 1141, has not won
wide acceptance, not least because it demands an unusually long, unexplained
delay between the two events.16 Even when I argued in 1985 that neither the
12 John of Salisbury, Historia pontificalis, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (London, 1956), p. 63: "Erat hic
dignitate sacerdos, habitu canonicus regularis, et qui carnem suam indumentorum asperitate et mnedia
macerabat. Ingenio perspicax, peruicax in studio scripturarum, facundus eloquio, et contemptus mundi
uehemens predicator.... Ob quam causam a domino Innocentio papa depositus et extrusus ab Italia,
descendit in Franciam et adhesit Petro Abaielardo, partesque eius cum domino lacincto, qui nunc
cardinalis est, aduersus abbatem Clareuallensem studiosius fouit." Cf. Bernard, Ep. 195 (SBOp 8:50;
1:852): "Exsecratus quippe a Petro apostolo, adhaeserat Petro Abaelardo, cuius omnes errores, ab
Ecclesia iam deprehensos atque damnatos, cum illo etiam et prae illo defendere acriter et pertinaciter
conabatur."
13 Innocent II, Epp. 447 and 448 (PL 179:515C-517A and 517B-C), from Mansi, Sacrorum con-
ciliorum ... collectio, 54 vols. (1759-98; repr. Paris, 1901-27), 21:564-65; Regesta pontificum Ro-
manorum, ed. Philipp Jaffe and Wilhelm Wattenbach, 1 (Leipzig, 1885), nos. 8148-49. Innocent's Ep.
447, but not Ep. 448, was widely circulated in manuscripts of Bernard's correspondence, as Ep. 194
in SBOp 8:46-48. The text of Innocent II's Ep. 447, printed in PL 179 from Mansi, is the version
cited by Otto of Freising in his Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris 1.50, ed. G. Waitz and B. von Simson,
MGH SSrG 46:71-73. In all manuscripts of the Gesta Friderici, the date is given as XII. Kal. Aug.
(July 21), presumably an error for XVII. Kal. Aug. (July 16). In one manuscript of the Gesta Friderici,
Innocent's letter is mistakenly addressed to Rainald of Reims (d. January 13/14, 1139) rather than to
Samson of Reims, an error that crept into the text printed by Mansi, reproduced in PL 179:515C.
14 Wilhelm Meyer, "Die Anklagesatze des h. Bernhard gegen Abaelard," Nachrichten von der Kbnigl.
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gdttingen, Phil.-hist. Klasse (1898), 397-468, esp. p. 420. Meyer
based his preference for 1140 on the slender grounds that Louis VII would have been too busy pre-
paring his military expedition to Aquitaine (which departed around June 24, 1141) to attend a dis-
putation at Sens on May 26, 1141; see nn. 23 and 130, below. Constable usefully summarizes positions
subsequent scholars have taken on the date of the council in The Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2:318
n. 15.
15 The first scholar to suggest that the Dialectica was also written in these final years was Victor
Cousin, Ouvrages inedits d'Abelard pour servir a l'histoire de la philosophie scolastique en France
(Paris, 1836), pp. xxxiii-xxxv.
16 Constable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2:318-19. Constable's argument in favor of 1140
for the council was based on the twin assumptions that Nicholas of Montieramy, whom he noted was
still in Rome in February-March 1141, was the messenger involved in bringing news of the Council
of Sens to Rome and that he stayed there until September 1141; see below, n. 119. This dating is
followed, without acknowledgment, by Godman, The Silent Masters, p. 12 (n. 7 above).

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Dialectica nor the Dialogus could have been written in the last years of Abelard's
life, I still assumed that the council took place in 1140, as did Ferruccio Gastaldelli
in his rich annotations to the text and translation of Bernard's letters, published
in 1986-87.17
The following year Gastaldelli published a detailed study of a valuable early
account of Bernard's life, preserved by Geoffrey of Auxerre, in which he reassigned
the council to 1141, as did Pietro Zerbi in his own studies of the controversy
between Bernard and Abelard. Yet while this revised chronology was taken for
granted by Peter Dinzelbacher in his biography of Bernard of Clairvaux, recent
studies of Peter Abelard have continued to follow the traditional dating. The issue
of dating relates to more than a point of detail. Our understanding of the political
context in which the council took place is dependent on a correct chronology of
events. The primary sources relating to the Council of Sens demand fresh atten-
tion, not just to settle a question of the year in which it was held, but to understand
the broader political context in which William and Bernard laid those serious
accusations of heresy against Abelard.
The principal authority on which Vacandard relied for dating the Council of
Sens to 1140 is a Premonstratensian continuation to the chronicle of Sigebert of
Gembloux (ca. 1030-1107), compiled around 1155 somewhere in the diocese of
Reims. It reports some event for every year (vetus stylus, running from Easter to
Easter) from 1113 to 1155.18 While the chronicle has often been quoted to defend
an 1140 date, the points raised by Deutsch have never been seriously addressed.
Its entries for 1139 and 1140 reveal not just a problematic chronology but also a
particular perspective on a very turbulent phase in the history of France, and of
Reims in particular. Under the year 1139 it reports that after the death of Rainald
(d. January 13/14, 1139; 1138 vetus stylus) Reims was without an archbishop
"for roughly two years," but that Samson of Mauvoisin, provost of Chartres,
subsequently accepted the position.19 Taken literally, this evidence would imply
17 Mews, "The Lists of Heresies"; introduction to CCCM 13:277-85 (n. 2 above); and "On Dating
the Works of Peter Abelard," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age 52 (1985), 73-
134, reprinted in Mews, Abelard and His Legacy. Leclercq followed this date in "Les formes succes-
sives" and "Les lettres de Guillaume de Saint-Thierry" (n. 2 above), as did Gastaldelli in notes to
Opere di San Bernardo, 1:772-851 and 2:362-82 (n. 1 above).
18 The complex manuscript tradition of continuations to Sigebert's chronicle, edited by L. C. Beth-
mann in 1844 (MGH SS 6:268-474), deserves much fuller examination than can be given here. Beth-
mann edited the Continuatio Praemonstratensis from Cambrai, Bibliotheque municipale (hereafter
Bm), MS 965 (863), fols. 122v-128r, in MGH SS 6:447-56. Although he thought it was written in
the diocese of Reims or Laon (6:417), the emphasis of its entries is overwhelmingly that of Reims, and
up to 1126 draws mostly on the Vita Norberti. The information about Laon is taken by the Premon-
stratensian chronicle from the Auctarium Laudunense (6:445-57) in 1154-55.
19 Rainald had become archbishop of Reims in 1124, according to the Continuatio Praemonstra-
tensis, MGH SS 6:452; see Bernard, Ep. 312 to Rainald (SBOp 8:242; 2:320-21). Mabillon had dated
Rainald's death to 1139, in a note reprinted in PL 182:330D. The confusion seems to have come from
the editors of Gallia Christiana, 9:83-84, who report an inscription dating his death to 1138 (vetus
stylus, i.e, January 1139) but then assign it to January 1138 in order to allow for a two-year absence
before Samson's consecration, assigned to April 1140. While Pierre Varin pointed out this error in an
important note, in Archives administratives de la ville de Reims, 1 (Paris, 1839), p. 296, the faulty
date was reproduced without question by Pius Bonifatius Gams, Series episcoporum ecclesiae catholi-
cae (Regensburg, 1873; repr. Graz, 1957), p. 609; see Giles Constable, "The Disputed Election at

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that Samson did not accept the position before January 13, 1141. Then follows a
list of outstanding bishops, all of whom were friends of Bernard of Clairvaux.
Under the rubric for 1140 three major events are listed: the death of Hugh of
Saint-Victor, a great luminary of the church; the Council of Sens, at which Abelard
narrowly escaped condemnation; and the seeds of dissension between Count
Theobald and Louis VII.
1139. When Rainald the archbishop of Reims [1124-39] died, the church of Reims
lacked a bishop for roughly two years, and at length in this year Samson, of the clergy
of the church of Chartres, accepted its governance [1 140?-61]. The Gallic church flour-
ished at this time through men illustrious in religion and wisdom: Miles, bishop of
Therouanne [1131-58], outstanding in the virtue of humility; Alvisus of Arras [1131-
48], distinguished in liberality, foresight, and fluency; Godefroy of Langres [1140-64];
Hugh of Auxerre [1137-51]; Joscelin of Soissons [1126-52]; Geoffrey of Chalons-sur-
Marne [1131-42]; Alberic, archbishop of Bourges [1136-41], most distinguished in
knowledge of letters and the wisdom of foresight. Among these and many other distin-
guished men Bernard of Clairvaux was particularly eminent; a man of most religious
life and a most fervent preacher and founder of countless monasteries, he inspired many
souls daily to follow the religious life and a commitment to holy poverty.
1140. Hugh of Paris [d. February 11, 1141], canon of Saint-Victor, distinguished in
religion and knowledge of letters and second to none in his day in mastery of the seven
liberal arts, died. Among the many useful things that he wrote, he published a truly
essential book about the sacraments, contained in two volumes. There was an assembly
of bishops and religious abbots at Sens in the presence of King Louis, against Peter
Abelard, who scandalized the church with a kind of profane novelty of words or mean-
ings. Having been summoned by them, when about to reply, he became fearful about
justice and appealed for a hearing to the Apostolic See. Escaping in this way, he died
not long after at Saint-Marcel-sur-Saone. The seed of dissension developed between King
Louis and Count Theobald, because the count declined to set out on an expedition with
the king to Aquitaine.20
Langres in 1138," Traditio 13 (1957), 119-52, esp. pp. 144-45, reprinted in Cluniac Studies, Col-
lected Studies Series 109 (London, 1980). Varin's argument that the pontificate of Samson began only
after August 1, 1140, is followed by Achille Luchaire, Etudes sur les actes de Louis VII (Paris, 1885),
no. 47, p. 114. Other evidence, however, supports 1140 rather than 1141; see n. 156 below.
20 Continuatio Praemonstratensis, ed. Bethmann, MGH SS 6:451-52 (Cambrai, Bm, MS 965, fols.
125v-126r): "1139. Rainoldo Remorum archiepiscopo defuncto, aecclesia Remensis per biennium
fere pontifice caruit; et tandem hoc anno Samson de clero Carnotensis aecclesiae Remensem praesu-
latum suscepit. Florebat hoc tempore Gallicana aecclesia per viros religione ac sapientia illustres,
Milonem Morinensem episcopum, humilitatis virtute precipuum, Alvisum Atrebatensem, liberalitate
atque consilio et facundia clarum, Godefridum Lingonensem, Hugonem Autisiodorensem, loslenum
Suessionensem, Giffridum Catalaunensem, Albericum Bituricensem archiepiscopum, scientia littera-
rum atque consilii prudentia clarissimum. Inter hos et alios multos tunc claros scientia viros etiam
Bernardus Clarevallensis abbas, vir opinatissimae religionis, eminentissime clarebat; qui verbi Dei
ferventissimus predicator et innumerabilium monasteriorum fundator, multas cotidie animas ad stu-
dium religionis et sanctae paupertatis propositum inbuebat. Habitaculum servorum Dei in loco qui
dicitur Ad montem Dei construitur. 1140. Hugo Parisiensis Sancti Victoris canonicus, religione et
litterarum scientia clarus et in septem liberalium artium peritia nulli sui temporis secundus, obit. Qui
inter multa quae utiliter scripsit, etiam librum de sacramentis valde necessarium, duobus voluminibus
comprehensum, edidit. Senonis presente rege Ludovico episcoporum et abbatum religiosorum fit con-
ventus contra Petrum Abaelardum, qui quadam profana verborum vel sensuum novitate aecclesiam
scandalizabat. Qui ab eis interpellatus, cum esset responsurus, de iusticia veritus, audientiam aposto-

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1141. After occupying the principality of Calabri

war on Pope Innocent....
A partisan vision of history is being put forward here. No explanation is given

for the two-year absence of an archbishop at Reims after the death of Rainald, or
mention made of the commune established at the city. The chronicler is explicit,
however, about whom he admires: a number of outstanding ecclesiastical leaders,
of whom the greatest was Bernard of Clairvaux. He then contrasts Hugh of Saint-
Victor, as the most learned theologian of the age, with Peter Abelard, presented
as a blasphemer, who escaped only through a cowardly appeal to Rome, and then
dying shortly afterwards. He uses the same Pauline phrase "profane novelty of
words or meanings" (1 Tim. 6.20) as Bernard employed to describe Abelard as
dialectician, who remained more concerned with words for their own sake than
with enduring spiritual or ethical truths.21 The chronicler gives no particular ex-
planation for the calling of the Council of Sens, beyond reporting that its major
action was to condemn Peter Abelard.
The chronicler's chronology of these events has been of great influence on sub-
sequent historiography. Yet of the three events assigned to the year between Easter
1140 (April 7) and Easter 1141 (March 30), only one of them is certainly correct,
the death of Hugh of Saint-Victor, who died February 11, 1141 (1140 vetus sty-
lUS).22 The royal expedition to Aquitaine took place, not in 1140, but between
June 24 and mid-September 1141.23 If the Council of Sens took place after the
death of Hugh of Saint-Victor, it must have occurred on the octave of Pentecost
(May 25), 1141, rather than on June 2, 1140. The entries relating to Abelard and
to Louis VII's expedition to Aquitaine seem to have been mistakenly assigned to
1140 rather than to 1141.
licae sedis appellavit; et sic evadens, non multo post Cabiloni ad Sanctum Marcellum obiit. Inter regem
Ludovicum et comitem Theobaldum simultatis germen pullulat, pro eo quod comes cum rege in Aqui-
tanicam expeditionem proficisci detrectat. 1141. Rogerus de Sicilia post occupatum Calabriae et Apu-
liae principatum, papam Innocentium bello cepit...." The passage about Sens was reproduced by
Robert of Auxerre, Chronicon (ca. 1203), ed. G. Waitz, MGH SS 26:235, and the Chronicon Turonense
(ca. 1203-7), ed. Peter Dronke, Abelard and Heloise in Medieval Testimonies (Glasgow, 1976), p. 51,
but combined with an alternative historiographical tradition, more sympathetic to Abelard, going back
to William Godel (n. 137 below). On Godel and contrasting images of Abelard, see my introduction
to the Theologia "Scholarium," CCCM 13:290-92 (dating the council to 1140) and The Lost Love
Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York, 1999),
pp. 37-39 (dating the council to 1141).
21 Bernard, Epp. 190.2, 192, 332 (SBOp 8:18, 43, 271; 1:792, 842; 2:370), "profanas novitates et
vocum, et sensuum," picked up by Geoffrey of Auxerre in the Vita prima 3.5, PL 185:311A. John
Marenbon comments on the enduring nature of these stereotypes in The Philosophy of Peter Abelard
(Cambridge, Eng., 1997), esp. pp. 340-49.
22 Hugh's death is reported by an eyewitness called Osbert as taking place on Tuesday, February 11,
which fell on 1141 in modern reckoning (PL 175:clxiii, with commentary at col. cxxviiiB).
23 On the date of Louis VII's campaign to Aquitaine, see Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History
of Orderic Vitalis 13.44, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1968-80), 6:550; and
Luchaire, Etudes sur les actes de Louis VII, no. 75, pp. 123-24; see also n. 130 below.

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There is another chronicle from Reims, written around 1150, that speaks a little
more about the violence associated with the commune, but again with similar
chronological confusion about events that had occurred only a decade earlier.
After correctly assigning the death of Archbishop Rainald to 1138 (vetus stylus),
the Annals of Reims reports briefly on the establishment of a commune at Reims
in 1139 and on the consecration of Samson as archbishop on the octave of Easter
(April 14), 1140:
1140. In this year Samson was consecrated as archbishop in the city of Soissons, on
the octave of Easter; and in the same year the commune of Reims was destroyed in the
presence of the king and with the help of Count Theobald.24
While the dates given here are uncertain, these terse phrases about the commune
of Reims hint at the social ferment agitating the city during 1139-40. Vacandard
relied on its statement that Samson was consecrated archbishop in 1140 to refute
Deutsch's argument (itself drawn from charter evidence) that Samson was not
consecrated before August 1, 1140.25 The evidence relating to the exact year of
Samson's consecration is contradictory. He is reported to have been in the first
year of his episcopate in November 1140 according to an entry with the martyr-
ology of Saint-Symphorien that attests to continuing instability within the city of
Reims during this year:
On November 19, 1140, our church was dedicated by Bishop Miles of Therouanne, in
the first year of Lord Samson; desecrated by two wicked followers of the commune,
Simon and Alberic, it needed to be purified. They had imposed here a blasphemer, with
an ear chopped off, whom it is wicked to call a priest, to celebrate here the divine
mysteries on the feast of All Saints.26
Why Miles of Therouanne should have performed this ceremony, rather than Sam-
son, is not clear. In any case, it is evident that the commune had not been fully
crushed, even by November 1, 1140.
There is no doubt that this prolonged lack of episcopal leadership in Reims was
highly irregular and alarmed many monastic contemporaries. According to a rul-
24 Annales Remenses et Colonienses, MGH SS 16:733: "1140. Hoc anno fuit consecratus Samson
archiepiscopus in Suessionis civitate, in octavis pasche, et in eodem anno destruitur communia Re-
mensis rege presente, et Teobaldo comite adiuvante." The annals are quite incorrect in assigning the
death of Alberic, archbishop of Bourges from 1137 until his death in early 1141, to 1139.
25 Varin, Archives administratives, 1:296 (n. 19 above). I am indebted to Professor Volpini for point-
ing out to me that an 1141 date for the consecration is supported by a charter of Orval from 1141,
identified as the first year of his archiepiscopate, and another referring to Samson as dying in the
twenty-first year of his episcopate, "archiepiscopatus sui anno XXI, quo et mortuus est": Cartulaire
de l'abbaye d'Orval, ed. H. Goffinet (Brussels, 1879), pp. 15-16, no. 9.
26 Varin, Archives adminstratives, 1:303; Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, 2nd ed.,
24 vols. (Paris, 1869-1904; henceforth cited as Recueil), 16:5. Samson is praised for bringing peace
to a city where perfida plebs had previously ruled, in verses found in Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek,
Phillipps 1694, fol. 188v, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, "Beschreibung einer Handschrift mittelalterlicher
Gedichte," Neues Archiv 17 (1892), 351-84, at pp. 382-83.

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ing of the Second Lateran Council, held in April 1139, there should not be a
vacancy of longer than three months after the death of a bishop, "lest canons
exclude religious men from the election of bishops."27 While Constable suggested
that the Premonstratensian chronicler's reference to Reims as lacking a bishop for
two years could have been a mental slip for fifteen months, the phrase "per bi-
ennium fere pontifice caruit" accords with the charter evidence that implies Sam-
son was not consecrated until after August 1, 1140.28 On the other hand, the
Annals of Reims and the martyrology of Saint-Symphorien imply that Samson
was already archbishop in 1140. It could be that Samson did not take formal
possession of the city of Reims until late 1140 or early 1141 (two years after
Rainald's death), giving the impression to some archivists that his episcopate did
not begin until then. Whichever year Samson was consecrated, the fact that this
ceremony took place in Soissons suggests his position in Reims was not yet secure.
Even in November 1140, Reims was still a city divided between supporters and
opponents of the commune, as the episode at Saint-Symphorien makes clear.
Quite separate evidence that the Council of Sens took place in 1141, first noted
by a seventeenth-century Bollandist, Godefroy Henschenius, is provided by a
chronicle of Tournai, written around 1160. It reports that on "Monday evening,
April 21 " a young canon of Tournai experienced a vision of St. Eleutherius, proph-
esying the impending restoration of the city's status as a bishopric, independent
of the bishop of Noyon. The canons of the city decided to report the vision to the
bishops assembled at Sens "to debate the errors of Peter Abelard."29 April 21 falls
on a Monday in 1141, but not in 1140. Although Vacandard pointed to a state-
ment in the thirteenth-century chronicle of Vaucelles that the vision took place in
1140, this record does not have the authority of the twelfth-century testimony
from Tournai itself.30
The most decisive evidence in favor of an 1141 date for the council was brought
to public attention by Raffaello Volpini, whose arguments were reported inde-
27 Concilium Lateranense II 28, in Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo et

al. (Bologna, 1972), p. 179: "Obeuntibus sane episcopis, quoniam ultra tres menses vacare ecclesias
prohibent patrum sanctiones, sub anathemate interdicimus, ne canonici de sede episcopali ab electione
episcoporum excludant religiosos viros, sed eorum consilio honesta et idonea persona in episcopum
eligatur."
28 Constable, "The Disputed Election," p. 145.
29 Historiae Tornacenses 1.2, ed. Godefroy Henschenius, in Acta sanctorum (1657; repr. Paris, 1863-
67), Febr. III, p. 196. Henschenius remarked briefly of the Council of Sens in a note (p. 197): "Anno
1141, non 1140, ut passim alii referunt." For further detail on this text, see nn. 150-51 below.
30 Continuatio Valcellensis, ed. Bethmann, MGH SS 6:459; see n. 151 below. In a postscript to
"Chronologie abelardienne," pp. 244-45, Vacandard appended a fourth, very fragile argument, based
on a statement in Troyes, Bm, MS 1402, that Geoffrey of Peronne, appointed prior of Clairvaux in
1140, was offered the see of Nantes (vacant at the time) in the first year of his office. He argued that
"Nannetensem" in this manuscript should be replaced by "Tornacensem," the city named in a popular
version of this story, as told by Peter of Blois and others. It seems strange that Geoffrey would have
been offered a bishopric in 1140 before it had been created. Vacandard twists the evidence to make it
suit his purpose.

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pendently by Pietro Zerbi31 and Ferruccio Gastaldelli.32 Volpini observed that Ste-
phen, cardinal bishop of Palestrina, to whom Bernard sent Letter 331 immediately
after the Council of Sens, began to sign papal documents as cardinal bishop only
after April 7, 1141. Stephen, a monk of Clairvaux, was consecrated cardinal
bishop on the octave after Easter, namely, April 6, 1141. Bernard's other letters
to Stephen were all written between 1141-42 and his death in March 1144.33
Innocent II had originally asked Bernard to send him monks from Clairvaux in
1140. After some initial hesitation, Bernard had allowed a small group of monks
to travel to Tre Fontane, where their first abbot was Bernardo Paganelli, subse-
quently elected Pope Eugenius III.34 As one of the monks raised by Innocent II to
31 Pietro Zerbi first questioned the 1140 date for a different reason, namely, that it left too little time
for Arnold of Brescia to have studied with Abelard and then to defend his cause: "Di alcune questioni
cronologiche riguardanti il concilio di Sens," in Cultura e societa nell'Italia medievale: Studi per Paolo
Brezzi, Studi Storici dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo 184-92 (Rome, 1988), pp. 848-
59. He opted more decisively for 1141, on the basis of the letter to Stephen of Palestrina, in "Bernardo
di Chiaravalle e le controversie dottrinali," in Bernardo di Chiaravalle cistercense. Accademia Tu-
dertina-Centro di studi sulla spiritualita medioevale: Atti del XXVI Convegno storico internazionale,
Todi, 8-11 ottobre 1989 (Spoleto, 1990), pp. 131-63, and "Les differends doctrinaux," in Saint
Bernard de Clairvaux: Histoire, mentalites, spiritualit, Sources Chretiennes 380 (Paris, 1992), pp.
429-58. He had previously argued for an 1140 date in "San Bernardo di Chiaravalle e il concilio di
Sens," in Studi su San Bernardo di Chiaravalle nell'ottavo centenario della canonizzazione (Rome,
1975), pp. 49-74; "Remarques sur l'Epistola 98 de Pierre le Venerable," in Pierre Abelard-Pierre le
Venerable: Les courants artistiques, philosophiques et thbologiques au courant du XIIe sicle, ed. Jean
Jolivet (Paris, 1976), pp. 215-34; "'In Cluniaco vestra sibi perpetuam mansionem elegit' (Petri Ve-
nerabilis Epistola 98): Un momento decisivo nella vita di Abelardo dopo il concilio di Sens," in Sto-
riografia e storia: Studi in onore di Eugenio Dupre Theseider (Rome, 1974), pp. 627-44, reprinted in
Pietro Zerbi, Tra Milano e Cluny: Momenti di vita e cultura ecclesiastica nel secolo XII (Rome, 1978),
pp. 373-95; "Guillaume de Saint-Thierry et son differend avec Abelard," in Saint-Thierry: Une abbaye
du VIe au XXe siecle. Actes du colloque international d'histoire monastique, Reims, Saint-Thierry, 11
au 14 octobre 1976, ed. M. Bur (Saint-Thierry, 1979), pp. 395-412, translated byJ. Carfantan, "Wil-
liam of St. Thierry and His Dispute with Abelard," in William, Abbot of St. Thierry: A Colloquium
at the Abbey of St. Thierry, Cistercian Studies Series 94 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1987), pp. 181-203.
Zerbi has kindly informed me of a publication that he is preparing, Filosofi e logici. Un ventennio di
incontri e scontri: Soissons, Sens, Cluny (1121-41).
32 Ferruccio Gastaldelli, "Le pii antiche testimonianze biografiche su San Bernardo: Studio storico-
critico sui 'Fragmentum Gaufridi,'" Analecta Cisterciensia 45 (1989), 3-80, esp. pp. 60-61.
33 Bernard, Ep. 331 (SBOp 8:269-70; 1:366-68). Bernard also sent to Stephen Epp. 219 (1141-
44), 224 (1143-44), 230-32 (1142-43), and 528 (1142). In "Le piiu antiche testimonianze," p. 60,
Gastaldelli acknowledges his debt to a study of Raffaello Volpini, also acknowledged by Zerbi in
"Bernardo di Chiaravalle e le controversie dottrinali," p. 133 n. 7, and in "Les differends doctrinaux,"
p. 433 n. 11, where it is wrongly described as published in Aevum 66 (1992). In a private communi-
cation, Volpini, who is preparing a book, Cardinali del secolo XII, has confirmed that the first certain
reference to Stephen as a cardinal is in a charter for San Florido, Citta di Castello, dated April 8, 1141,
in Italia pontificia, ed. Paul Fridolin Kehr, 4 (Berlin, 1909), p. 102 n. 102, edited and reproduced in
facsimile by Giovanni Magherini-Graziani, Storia di Citta di Castello, 2 vols. (Citta di Castello, 1890),
2:59 and 287-88. Stephen subsequently appears regularly as signatory to papal charters in charters
after April 12, 1141: PL 179:539D. Gastaldelli summarizes Stephen's career in his note to Ep. 219
(2:24). Born ca. 1080 in the diocese of Chalons-sur-Marne, Stephen became archdeacon of that city,
then monk at Clairvaux, and cardinal in Rome (here assuming this to be 1140) until his death in 1144.
Stephen is praised as one of the monastic cardinals in the Vita prima 2.8, PL 185:297B. I am indebted
to both Ferruccio Gastaldelli and Pietro Zerbi for information about Volpini's argument.
34 Epp. 184, 237, and 345 (SBOp 8:4, 113-15, 286-88; 1:762, 2:394-96).

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the rank of cardinal bishop in 1141, Stephen was in a good position to help
Bernard secure the condemnation of Peter Abelard.
This revised chronology of the Council of Sens fits in much better with the fast-
moving politics of the years immediately following the Second Lateran Council.
It means that Arnold of Brescia, expelled from Italy sometime in April 1139, was
associated with Abelard in Paris for a much longer period than hitherto thought.
Although William of Saint-Thierry (1075-1148), who had lived for over twenty
years in Reims, first as a monk at Saint-Nicasius (1095-1121), then as abbot of
Saint-Thierry (1128-35), had moved to the Cistercian abbey of Signy in 1135, he
remained in close contact with his native city and was perturbed by the influence
of theological ideas that he considered undermined traditional notions of divine
and ecclesiastical authority. In Lent 1140 William wrote to both Bernard of Clair-
vaux and Geoffrey of Chartres, warning them of the threat presented by the teach-
ings of Peter Abelard. Bernard drafted his own version of a treatise on the errors
of Abelard, this time addressed to the pope.
Bernard was actively engaged in preaching against the errors of Abelard during
the winter of 1140-41. He preached his sermon On Conversion to students in
Paris, initially on November 1, 1140, and then again on the feast of Epiphany,
January 6, 1141. There simply would not have been enough time for the cam-
paign against Abelard to get under way if William wrote to Bernard in the same
year as the council.36 After two unsuccessful meetings with Bernard over the winter
of 1140-41, Abelard eventually persuaded the archbishop of Sens to summon
both himself and Bernard to a council, scheduled to be held on the octave of
Pentecost (May 25), 1141. At the council, however, Abelard feared that he would
not get a fair hearing and decided to exercise his right to appeal to Rome. Bernard
sent a bundle of letters to the pope and various cardinals in Rome, calling for
Abelard's condemnation. The request was granted by Innocent II with a letter
excommunicating Abelard and his followers, issued on July 16, 1141. This preach-
ing stirred Abelard to find a way to defend himself against the accusations being
made by the abbot of Clairvaux.
Even if Jules Michelet's extravagant claims about Abelard embodying the claims
to freedom made by urban communes were naive in their boldness, Bernard's
linking of Abelard with Arnold of Brescia cannot be dismissed as simply a false
accusation.37 Studies of the conflict between Bernard and Abelard often focus
exclusively on the rival intellectual traditions they are thought to embody, without
appreciation of the way political pressures shaped the rhetoric of the participants
involved in the conflict. Bernard and Abelard have too often been artificially con-
structed as metaphors for "tradition" and "modernity" respectively. The Council
Gastaldelli, "Le piiu antiche testimonianze," pp. 57-61, and "'Optimus praedicator': L'opera
oratoria di San Bernardo," Analecta Cisterciensia 51 (1995), 321-418, esp. p. 339. See Geoffrey of
Auxerre, De vita et miraculis S. Bernardi 49, ed. Robert Lechat, "Les Fragmenta de vita et miraculis
S. Bernardi par Geoffroy d'Auxerre," Analecta Bollandiana 50 (1932), 83-122, at pp. 115-16.
36 This sequence is presumed, however, by Paul Verdeyen in his introduction to the works of William
of Saint-Thierry, CCCM 68 (Turnhout, 1989), p. xxix.
37 Jules Michelet, Histoire de France, 4, reprinted in CEuvres completes, 4, ed. Paul Viallaneix (Paris,
1974), pp. 452-59.

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of Sens marked a turning point within the French church, not just because of the
accusations made against Abelard. It enabled a newly appointed archbishop of
Reims, strongly supported by Bernard of Clairvaux, to assert himself against the
archbishop of Sens, from whom Abelard mistakenly thought he could gain
support.
HENRY SANGLIER AND THE ARCHDIOCESE OF SENS
A key figure to understanding the Council of Sens is Henry Sanglier (ca. 1085-
1142), elected archbishop of Sens in 1122, although not consecrated until 1124.
His letter to Pope Innocent II, cosigned by most of his suffragan bishops, offers
our best account of the events leading up to the council.38 Henry, to whom the
bishops of Chartres, Orleans, Auxerre, Troyes, Meaux, Nevers, and Paris tech-
nically owed loyalty, was responsible for calling the council. A grand seigneur,
who had grown up in the court of Louis VI, Henry was a relative of Stephen of
Garlande (ca. 1075-1148), longtime chancellor to Louis VI and between 1120
and 1127-28 seneschal of France. Stephen was not only dean of the abbeys of
Sainte-Genevieve in Paris and of Sainte-Croix and Saint-Aignan in Orleans but
also provost of the cathedral of Sens.39 When Stephen fell from influence at court
in 1127-28, Bernard heard a report that Henry Sanglier had "submitted" to Geof-
frey of Chartres (1116-49), prompting the abbot of Clairvaux to dedicate to
Henry a treatise on the duties of bishops. For a period Bernard was supporting
the archbishop against the king.40 These good relations did not last. On January
15, 1136, Henry Sanglier was suspended by Pope Innocent II for disrespecting the
authority of Rome in approving a marriage annulment.41 The suspension reveals
a growing rift between Henry and Geoffrey of Chartres, the most senior of Henry's
suffragan bishops, charged by Innocent II early in 1132 with crushing support for
38 Ep. 337 among the letters of Bernard, PL 182:540B-542D; ed. Leclercq, in "Autour de la cor-
respondance de S. Bernard" (n. 2 above), pp. 185-92. The bishops are listed in order of the seniority
of their sees: Henry, archbishop of Sens, 1122-44; Geoffrey of Leves, bishop of Chartres, 1116-48;
Helias, bishop of Orleans, 1137-1145/46; Hugh, bishop of Auxerre, 1137-51; and Hato, bishop of
Troyes, 1123-45. Only the bishops of Paris and Nevers were absent. Leclercq argues (pp. 191-92)
that Sanglier's letter is much less well written than the letter of the bishops and that it was excluded
because it did not fit in with the literary and doctrinal character of the official collection.
39 Stephen of Senlis wrote to Henry about Stephen of Garlande as "consanguineus vester" in a letter
published in Recueil, 15:332, no. 6; see also Bautier, "Paris au temps d'Abelard," p. 68 (n. 6 above).
Jacques Henriet ("La cathedrale," p. 94; see n. 46 below) identifies a reference to Stephen of Garlande
as provost of Sens in a document (Paris, Archives Nationales, K.23 no. 6.19) from 1134-42. This
Stephen is first identified as provost of Sens in documents from 1111: Gallia Christiana, 12 Instr.:18 -
20. Henriet also observes (p. 162 n. 53) that although the authors of Gallia Christiana, 12:44, identify
Henry as of the de Boisroques family, in the region of Loudun, an eighteenth-century history (Paris,
Bibliotheque nationale de France [hereafter BnF], MS fr. 11583, fol. 459) identifies Henry as born in
July 1085, the son of Simon Sanglier.
40 Bernard, Ep. 42 (1:190), De moribus et officio episcoporum, addressed to Henry ca. 1127-28;
see also his Epp. 49-51 (SBOp 7:140-43; 1:262-66).
41 Whether the suspension had any effect is not certain. Henry Sanglier issued a charter in 1136 for
the Paraclete: Cartulaire de l'abbaye du Paraclet, ed. C. Lalore, Collection des Principaux Cartulaires
du Diocese de Troyes 2 (Paris, 1878), pp. 64-65, no. 47.

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Pope Anacletus 11 (1131-38) throughout Aquitaine.42 Sometime between 1136

and 1140, Bernard rebuked Henry for "hateful hardness" in deposing an uniden-
tified archdeacon.43 In 1139 Henry also suspended Thomas of Morigny from his
abbatial duties, on the grounds that he had absented himself from the Second
Lateran Council without permission. Thomas eventually resigned as abbot, going
into exile at Saint-Martin-des-Champs, Paris, in mid-Lent 1140, where he would
support Bernard in his campaign against Abelard.44
The Council of Sens was originally convened for the octave of Pentecost at Sens
as an occasion to display relics of saints. The importance the archbishop attached
to the event is underscored by the guests whom he invited: Louis VII, then only
twenty years old; the counts of Champagne and Nevers; the newly appointed
Archbishop Samson of Reims; and the suffragan bishops of both Sens and Reims.4s
This was to be a show of national unity before the relics of St. Stephen, as well
as an occasion to assert the dignity of the archbishopric of Sens over its suffragan
dioceses, including both Chartres and Paris. According to Geoffrey of Courlon
(ca. 1295), our richest source of information about twelfth-century Sens, Henry
had started to rebuild its cathedral between 1124 and 1128, the first years of his
episcopate.46 Unfortunately, the exact chronology of Sens cathedral is much less
well known than that of Saint-Denis, rebuilt by Suger during the 11 30s and newly
42 Innocent II, Ep. 217, PL 179:264B-265A; Jaffe-Wattenbach, no. 7754; ed. Robert-Henri Bautier
and Monique Gilles, Chronique de Saint-Pierre-le-Vif de Sens, dite de Clarius (Paris, 1979), pp. 280-
82. On Geoffrey's role 1132-40, see La chronique de Morigny, 1095-1152 3.2, ed. Leon Mirot (Paris,
1909), pp. 66-67, and Wilhelm Janssen, Die pdpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich vom Schisma Anaklets
bis zum Tode Coelestins III. (1130-1198) (Cologne, 1961), pp. 18-30. On the schism, see Mary
Stroll, The Jewish Pope: Ideology and Politics in the Papal Schism of 1130, Brill's Studies in Intellectual
History 8 (Leiden, 1987).
43 Bernard, Ep. 182 (SBOp 8:2; 1:58), dated to ca. 1136-39 by Gastaldelli; G. Grossier glosses over
the seriousness of Bernard's hostility in "Saint Bernard et Henri Sanglier," Bulletin de la Sociee ar-
cheologique de Sens 37 (1929-30), 71-79.
44 Chronique de Morigny 3.2, ed. Mirot, pp. 73-74.
45 Ep. 337, PL 182:541D-542A; ed. Leclercq, "Autour de la correspondance" (above, n. 2), p. 189:
"Illa vero die, scilicet octava Pentecostes, convenerant ad nos Senonis fratres et suffraganei nostri
episcopi, ob honorem et reverentiam sanctarum, quas in ecclesia nostra populo revelaturos nos indix-
eramus, reliquiarum. Itaque praesente glorioso rege Francorum Ludovico cum Willelmo religioso Ni-
vernis comite, domino quoque Remensi Archiepiscopo, cum quibusdam suis suffraganeis episcopis,
nobis etiam et suffraganeis nostris, exceptis Parisiis et Nivernis, episcopis praesentibus, cum multis
religiosis abbatibus et sapientibus valdeque litteratis clericis adfuit dominus Abbas Claraevallensis,
adfuit magister Petrus cum fautoribus suis." Otto of Freising mentions the presence of Theobald of
Champagne "and other nobles and countless others from the people": Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris
1.50, MGH SSrG 46:70.
46 Geoffrey of Courlon dates the rebuilding to 1124-28 and comments under the year 1144 that
Henry's successor, Hugh of Toucy, continued the rebuilding that Henry had begun: Chronicon Seno-
nense, ed. Gustave Julliot, Chronique de l'abbaye de Saint-Pierre-le-Vif de Sens redigee vers la fin du
XIIIe siecle par Geoffroy de Courlon (Sens, 1876), pp. 468 and 476. Jacques Henriet provides full
discussion of its architectural importance: "La cathedrale Saint-Etienne de Sens: Le parti du premier
maitre et les campagnes du XIIe siecle," Bulletin monumental 140 (1982), 81-168, arguing against
the view that there was a radical shift in design after the death of the first designer of the cathedral,
influenced by Saint-Denis, as formulated by Kenneth W. Severens, "The Early Campaign at Sens, 1140-
45," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 29 (1970), 97-107, and "The Continuous Plan
of Sens Cathedral," ibid. 34 (1975), 198-207.

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consecrated in 1144. The twelfth-century chron

monk with little sympathy for Sanglier, says n
the archbishop's building activity. Only in a brie
is there a comment about the one achievement f
the rebuilding of the cathedral.47 The new build
project. Far wider than the abbey churches of Cluny or Saint-Denis, it could ac-
commodate a vast assembly within its unified space. Even though the expanded
cathedral was still unfinished in 1141, the council planned for the octave of Pen-
tecost provided a major opportunity for Henry Sanglier to reassert his authority
within the church of France. He was competing with a serious rival in Suger, who
a year earlier, on June 19, 1140, had formally dedicated his new basilica at Saint-
Denis. Suger worked on that building with such speed that he was able to con-
secrate the choir of the abbey on June 11, 1144, in a ceremony that outstripped
the Council of Sens in size and magnificence.48 The cathedral of Sens took much
longer for Henry's successor, Hugh of Toucy (1142-68), to complete.49 Rather
47 Henry's building is not mentioned in the brief reference made to the death of Henry Sanglier under
the year 1144 in the continuation of 1128-1290: Chronique, ed. Bautier and Gilles, p. 198; Bautier
and Gilles edit (pp. 313-16) other notes added to the chronicle in BnF, MS lat. 5002, fols. 115v-116v,
but unfortunately not the note about Sanglier on fol. 114v, quoted by Henriet, "La cathedrale," p.
140: "1122. Obiit Daimbertus archiepiscopus, successit Henricus. Hic incepit renovare ecclesiam
Sancti Stephani. Eidem successit Hugo." Henriet, pp. 87-88, points out that the claim that Henry
started to rebuild the cathedral in 1140 goes back only to an undocumented assertion in Gallia Chris-
tiana, 12:47, and an unpublished eighteenth-century history of Sens. Bautier and Gilles edit (pp. 274-
76) letters from Honorius II (January 14, 1126) and Abbot Herbert (June 1126) about Henry Sanglier's
"oppression" of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif.
48 Suger, Scriptum consecrationis 6 and 13, ed. and trans. Francoise Gasparri, CEuvres, 1 (Paris,
1996), pp. 22 and 42.
49 Unlike Henry, Hugh was acceptable to the chronicler of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif, who mentions that
Alexander III consecrated an altar in 1163, although the building was then still incomplete: Chronique,
ed. Bautier and Gilles, p. 206, and Henriet, "La cathedrale," p. 88. Henry died on January 10 of either
1142 or 1143: Obituaires de la province de Sens, ed. Auguste Molinier, 1 (Paris, 1902), p. 3. The date
of 1142, given by Gallia Christiana, 12:47, Gams, p. 629, and all subsequent writers, derives princi-
pally from the suggestion of Duchesne, following a vague statement in the chronicle of Morigny
(Chronique 3.4, ed. Mirot, p. 78) that Henry Sanglier died after the election of Macharius as abbot
(1140-41) and the death in 1141 of Alberic, archbishop of Bourges. Alberic's death led to a disputed
election, not settled until 1143: Historiae Francorum scriptores, 5 vols. (Paris, 1643-49),4:386. Hugh
of Toucy is mentioned as archbishop of Sens in charters of Pontigny from September 1 to December
25, 1143, and January 2, 1144: Cartulaire de l'abbaye cistercienne de Pontigny (XII-XIIIe siecles),
ed. Martine Garrigues (Paris, 1981), pp. 137-38 and 102-3, nos. 64 and 26. Gallia Christiana does
not cite the testimony of three chroniclers of Sens that all place his death in 1144 (old style), perhaps
relying on a single mistaken source. Besides the statement in the Chronique, ed. Bautier and Gilles, p.
198, Geoffrey of Courlon twice states that Henry died in 1144 (although he may mistake the month
as he claims Eugenius III was pope, i.e., after February 15, 1145): Chronicon Senonense, ed. Julliot,
pp. 474: "Eodem anno, sancte memorie dominus Henricus, archiepiscopus, migrauit, ut creditur, ad
Xpistum," and 476: "Anno ab incarnatione Domini millesimo centesimo quadragesimo quarto, domi-
nus Hugo archiepiscopus efficitur; uir nobilis, maioris ecclesie canonicus, laudabilis et honestus, se-
dente Rome papa Eugenio tertio papa, imperante Corrardo, regnante super Francos sexto Ludouico.
Pro ecclesia maiori Sancti-Stephani, quam bonus Henricus inceperat, multum laborauit et fere perfe-
cit." Under the year 1145, the chronicler known as "William Godel" says that he became a monk of
Sens in the same year that Henry Sanglier died: Recueil, 13:675 (see n. 137 below). The letter of the
clergy of Sens recommending their choice of Hugh of Toucy and Hugh's first known charter (1145)

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than the cathedral of Sens, it would be Suger's structure that would influence
subsequent church architecture in the Ile-de-France.50 Suger, whose aesthetic val-
ues were shaped by the interpretation offered by Hugh of Saint-Victor of the
writings of Denis the Pseudo-Areopagite, was ultimately more successful than
Henry Sanglier in building a church that would symbolize the nation of France
rather than the archdiocese of Sens.
According to Geoffrey of Courlon, Abelard had acquired a canonry at Sens
before he married Heloise. This was probably through the influence of Stephen of
Garlande, provost at Sens even in 1111.51 Connections such as these prompted
Abelard to imagine that he would gain a just hearing at the council that Henry
Sanglier planned for the octave of Pentecost 1141. Henry explained to the pope
that he acceded to Abelard's request that he be allowed to defend himself at the
council only after repeated demands from Abelard, who was particularly angry
at the way Bernard was preaching against him in Paris:
He [Bernard] encouraged many of the students to renounce and reject books full of
poison and to fear and abstain from teaching that harmed catholic faith. Master Peter,
suffering this less than patiently and too bitterly, frequently began to harass us, and did
not wish to stop doing so, until we wrote to the lord abbot of Clairvaux and instructed
him to come into our presence on the assigned day, namely, the octave of Pentecost at
Sens, where Master Peter described and presented himself as ready to justify and defend
the teachings which the abbot of Clairvaux had criticized, as has been explained.52
are edited in Gallia Christiana, 12:33-35 Instr. Bernard urged the clergy of Sens to appoint Henry's
successor in Ep. 202 (SBOp 8:61-62; 1:874-76). Suger reports that Guido, archbishop of Sens, was
present at the consecration of Saint-Denis on June 11, 1144: Scriptum consecrationis, ed. Gasparri, p.
42. While it is normally assumed that this was simply a scribal mistake for Hugo (de Toucy), it is also
possible that Suger did not yet know who the new archbishop was. The consecration of Hugh of Toucy
was dated to 1145 by 0. Holder-Egger (MGH SS 26:195) and Leopold Delisle, Histoire litteraire de
la France, 32 (Paris, 1898), p. 252.
50 While Erwin Panofsky argued that Suger was overwhelmingly influenced by the thought of Denis
the Pseudo-Areopagite, in Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures (Prince-
ton, N.J., 1946), Francoise Gasparri points out the importance of the influence of Hugh of Saint-Victor
in her introduction to Suger, CEuvres, pp. xxxiii-xxxix; see also Grover A. Zinn, Jr., "Suger, Theology,
and the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition," in Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium, ed. Paula Lieber
Gerson (New York, 1986), pp. 33-40; and Conrad Rudolph, Artistic Change at St-Denis: Abbot
Suger's Program and the Early Twelfth-Century Controversy over Art (Princeton, N.J., 1990). On the
relation between architecture and learning, see Charles M. Radding and William W. Clark, Medieval
Architecture, Medieval Learning (New Haven, Conn., 1992), esp. pp. 105-9.
51 Geoffrey of Courlon, Chronicon Senonense, ed. Julliot, p. 472: "Anno Domini millesimo centesi-
mo quadragesimo, magister Petrus Abaulart, canonicus primo maioris ecclesie Senonensis, obiit. Qui
monasteria sanctimonialium fundauit, spetialiter abbatiam de Paraclito, in quo sepelitur cum vxore.
Suum epitaphium tale est. Est satis in titulo: Petrus hic iacet Abaillardus, hic soli patuit scibile quicquid
erat; canonicus fuit et post uxoratus." Abelard has Heloise refer to him as "clericum atque canonicum"
in Historia calamitatum, ed. Jacques Monfrin (Paris, 1967), p. 78.
52 Ep. 337, PL 182:541B; ed. Leclercq, "Autour de la correspondance," pp. 188-89: "Plures etiam
scholarium adhortatus est, ut et libros venenis plenos repudiarent et reicerent, et a doctrina quae fidem
laedebat catholicam caverent et abstinerent. Quod magister Petrus minus patienter et nimium aegre
ferens, crebro nos pulsare coepit, nec ante voluit desistere, quoad ad dominum Claraevallensem Ab-
batem super hoc scribentes, assignato die, scilicet octavo Pentecosten, Senonis ante nostram submonu-
imus venire presentiam, quo se vocabat et offerebat paratum magister Petrus ad probandas et defen-
dendas, de quibus illum dominus Abbas Claraevallensis, quomodo praetaxatum est, reprehenderat,
sententias."

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Henry's decision to grant Abelard's request meant that an event originally in-
tended as a show of unity was overshadowed by this impending confrontation.
Even before hearing confirmation that Bernard would respond to the summons
of Archbishop Henry, Abelard wrote to his supporters in Paris to summon them
to the council. From this letter we learn that Bernard had attacked Abelard at
Sens "in the presence of the lord archbishop and of my many friends" as well as
again in Paris.s3 In the meantime, Bernard asked the suffragan bishops of Sens to
act "like true friends, as the contrary faction (adversa pars) could also prepare
with trickery and cunning to trap the unaware. "54 Bernard's fears were genuine.
Abelard hoped to gain a sympathetic hearing from an archbishop who had already
fallen foul of the abbot of Clairvaux and who was also a kinsman of his old
patron, Stephen of Garlande. He thought that the council would provide an ideal
opportunity to demonstrate to the kingdom his own vision of catholic tradition
and his part in it. Just as Henry Sanglier was renovating his cathedral, so Peter
Abelard was renovating the teachings of tradition.55
A LEGACY OF DISTRUST: THE COUNCIL OF SOISSONS (1121) AND ITS AFTERMATH
In seeking justice from the forthcoming council, Abelard hoped that he would
gain a more favorable outcome than at the Council of Soissons in 1121. His
difficulties within the archdiocese of Reims had started eight years earlier, when
he went to hear Anselm of Laon (d. 1117) lecture on Scripture. The hostility
Abelard encountered from Anselm's disciples, Alberic of Reims and Lotulf of No-
vara, was undoubtedly sharpened by a still tense political situation within the city.
A year earlier, Gaudri, the bishop of Laon, had reversed his original promise to
establish a commune and had subsequently been murdered in an outbreak of civil
violence (April 25, 1112).56 The commune at Laon, like that established at Noyon
in 1108, had initially been set up with episcopal approval as a way of establishing
municipal government through elected representatives, with jurisdiction separate
from that of the cathedral chapter.57 Anselm himself had in the past been interested
in promoting justice within the community, and he reflected on many practical
53Epistola contra Bernardum abbatem, ed. Klibansky, in "Peter Abailard and Bernard of Clair-
vaux," p. 7 (n. 2 above).
54 Ep. 187 (SBOp 8:10; 1:774): "quoniam hoc quoque adversa pars in sua versutia et calliditate
providit, ut improvidos invaderet et congredi cogeret immunitos."
55 If Henry Sanglier was from Loudun, in Poitou (n. 39 above), there may have been another con-
nection with Abelard, whose father, Berengar, was Poitevin, according to Richard of Poitiers, Chroni-
con, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS 26:8 1. According to the rubric in manuscripts of Berengar's Apologia,
this Berengar was also from Poitiers (see n. 112 below). The association of writings of Berengar (who
quotes Abelard's Confessio fidei ad Heloisam within his Apologia) alongside the letters of Abelard
and Heloise suggests that he may have been involved in collecting all these texts: Mews, The Lost
Love Letters, pp. 41, 174, and 306 n. 39 (n. 20 above).
56 Historia calamitatum, ed. Monfrin, pp. 68-69; Auctarium Laudunense, MGH SS 6:445.
57 Albert Vermeesch highlights the episcopal origins of the commune, especially of Noyon, the ear-
liest commune of which we have a formal charter (1108), in Essai sur les origines et la signification
de la commune dans le nord de la France (XIe et XIIe sieles) (Heule, 1966), pp. 105-8.

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pastoral issues within an urban context.58 By 1112, however, the bishop of Laon,
effectively the feudal lord of the city, saw the commune as challenging his au-
thority. Abelard's decision to flout Anselm's authority and to start lecturing on
Scripture in the city was construed as another threat to episcopal authority, equally
dangerous. The bishop who initially succeeded Gaudri was Hugh (consecrated
August 4, 1112), dean of the cathedral of Orleans and a protege of Stephen of
Garlande. Hugh died after only seven months, enabling Barthelemy de Jur (1 1 13-
51), a friend of Bernard of Clairvaux, to become bishop in his place.59 At a time
of continuing violence within Laon, Abelard's decision to establish himself as a
rival teacher to Anselm of Laon was construed as both political and theological
disobedience.60
As Abelard makes clear in the Historia calamitatum, the accusations made by
Alberic of Reims and Lotulf of Novara at the Council of Soissons in March-April
1 121 stemmed from the animosity provoked at Laon in 11 13. Twenty years earlier,
Abelard's own teacher, Roscelin of Compiegne, had faced a similar situation at
another council held in Soissons, ca. 1091-92.61 Yet where Roscelin had rather
crudely defined the distinct meaning of pater, flius, and spiritus sanctus as separate
things (res), Abelard was more sophisticated in his analysis of divine names. He
taught that the three divine names signified different attributes of God, namely,
his power, wisdom, and benignity. While rumors were spread at Soissons that
Abelard was preaching that there were three Gods, he was in fact trying to counter
the crude implication of Roscelin's theology that what was signified by pater and
flius were separate things (res). In identifying the Son and Holy Spirit with the
wisdom and benignity of God, Abelard was simply extending an idea (based on
Augustine) that had previously been raised by William of Champeaux.62 The in-
novative aspect of Abelard's theology was his attribution of omnipotence to God
the Father alone, given much less emphasis than the Holy Spirit, identified as
divine goodness. Abelard reports that when his writings were burned at Soissons,
58 Philippe Buc, L'ambiguilte du Livre: Prince, pouvoir, et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible
au moyen age (Paris, 1994), pp. 30-33; see also Valerie Flint, "The School of Anselm of Laon: A
Reconsideration," Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 43 (1976), 89-110, reprinted in her
Ideas in the Medieval West: Texts and Their Contexts, Variorum Collected Studies 268 (London,
1988); and Marcia Colish, "Another Look at the School of Laon," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et
litteraire du moyen age 61 (1986), 7-22.
59 Guibert of Nogent, Monodiae, ed. E.-R. Labande (Paris, 1981), p. 394. Abelard must have gone
to Laon soon after William of Champeaux became bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne, following the death
of Bishop Hugh (May 20, 1113).
60 Vermeesch, Essai sur les origines, pp. 108-13. The accord of 1128, reestablishing a commune at
Laon, highlights the violence that plagued the city: Ordonnances des rois de France de la troisieme
race, 22 vols. (Paris, 1723-1814), 11:185-87.
61 See Mews, "St Anselm, Roscelin and the See of Beauvais," in Anselm, Aosta, Bec and Canterbury:
Papers in Commemoration of the Nine-Hundredth Anniversary of Anselm's Enthronement as Arch-
bishop, 25 September 1093, ed. D. E. Luscombe and G. R. Evans (Sheffield, 1996), pp. 106-19, and
"Bruno of Reims and Roscelin of Compiegne on the Psalms," forthcoming in The Eleventh Century:
Proceedings of the International Medieval Latin Conference, ed. Michael Herren, Publications of the
Journal of Medieval Latin.
62 Peter Abelard, Theologia "Summi boni" 1.1, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13:86; William of
Champeaux, Sententie, in Psychologie et morale, ed. Odo Lottin, 5 (Gembloux, 1959), pp. 190-94;
and Hugh of Saint-Victor, De sacramentis 1.2.7-8, PL 176:209A-210A.

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it was claimed that he taught that "only God the Father was omnipotent."63 A
number of passages that Abelard added to his treatise (initially called a De Trini-
tate, now renamed Theologia Christiana) confirm that his questioning of tradi-
tional notions of divine omnipotence was the most controversial part of his ar-
gument.64 The concerns raised by Alberic of Reims, that Abelard seemed to say
that God could not beget himself, reflect suspicion that Abelard was questioning
the power of God, just as he questioned ecclesiastical authority. William, newly
appointed as abbot of Saint-Thierry, had been present at the Council of Soissons
in 1121.65 The opening accusation raised by William in 1140, that Abelard at-
tributed omnipotence to the Father alone, not to the Son or the Holy Spirit, di-
rectly repeated the charge formulated against Abelard at Soissons.
Abelard suffered only a short confinement at the monastery of Saint-Medard in
Soissons. Within the two decades that followed, however, profound changes took
place in the political map of France. The first clear sign of a shift in the balance
of power became evident in 1127-28, with the ousting of Stephen of Garlande as
seneschal and the rise to influence of Ralph of Vermandois.66 In 1129 Suger gained
a significant economic asset for Saint-Denis when he acquired royal approval for
replacing the nuns of Argenteuil, under the leadership of Heloise, with monks
from his own abbey.67 The accidental death of Philip, eldest son of Louis VI, and
the subsequent consecration at Reims of the ten-year-old Louis by Pope Inno-
cent II, then in exile in France, also strengthened Suger's influence. In June 1137
63 Historia calamitatum, ed. Monfrin, p. 88: "Ut tamen non nichil dicere viderentur, quidam de
adversariis meis id submurmuravit quod in libro scriptum deprenderat solum patrem Deum omnipo-
tentem esse." That this was the official charge against Abelard at Soissons, not that of the Sabellian
heresy, as claimed by Otto of Freising, is supported both by this statement of Abelard and the extensive
discussion of divine power added to the Theologia Christiana. The Sabellian charge was made by
Roscelin of Compiegne, whose definition of the Trinity as distinct things (res) Otto claims is orthodox
teaching: Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris 1.49, MGH SSrG 46:69: "Quare de sancta trinitate docens et
scribens tres personas, quas sancta aecclesia non vacua nomina tantum, sed res distinctas suisque
proprietatibus discretas hactenus et pie credidit et fideliter docuit, nimis adtenuans, non bonis usus
exemplis, inter caetera dixit: 'Sicut eadem oratio est propositio, assumptio et conclusio, ita eadem
essentia est pater et filius et spiritus sanctus.' Ob hoc Suessionis provinciali contra eum synodo sub
presentia Romanae sedis legati congregata, ab egregiis viris et nominatis magistris Alberico Remense
et Letaldo Novariense Sabellianus hereticus iudicatus...." Abelard never mentions this Sabellian ac-
cusation in the Historia calamitatum, contradicting the claim of Vergani (n. 2 above) that Otto was
drawing here on Abelard's narrative.
64 See Theologia Christiana 1.25-31 and 5.1-58, ed. Eligius-Marie Buytaert, CCCM 12 (Turnhout,
1969), pp. 81-85 and 347-72.
65 Paul Verdeyen summarizes William's career in his introduction to William's Expositio super Epis-
tolam ad Romanos, CCCM 86 (Turnhout, 1989), pp. v-xi. The Vita antiqua of William of Saint-
Thierry states that he studied at Reims before becoming a monk: Melanges Godefroid Kurth, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1908), 1:85-96; see John R. Williams, "The Cathedral School of Reims in the Time of Master
Alberic, 1118-1136," Traditio 20 (1964), 93-114, esp. p. 95. William's presence at Soissons was
discovered by John Benton, "Fraud, Fiction and Borrowing in the Correspondence of Abelard and
Heloise," in Pierre Abeard-Pierre le Venerable (above, n. 31), p. 486 n. 41.
66 Abelard refers to the support of Stephen in becoming freed from Saint-Denis in Historia calami-
tatum, ed. Monfrin, p. 92; see Bautier, "Paris au temps d'Abelard" (n. 6 above), pp. 68-69.
67 Thomas G. Waldman, "Abbot Suger and the Nuns of Argenteuil," Traditio 41 (1985), 239-72.
On the political background of these years, see Mews, The Lost Love Letters, pp. 153-57, and the
introduction of Gasparri to Suger, CEuvres, pp. xxv-xxvi.

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Suger and Geoffrey of Chartres presided over the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine
to the young Louis, one further step in asserting royal control over Aquitaine and
Anjou. These developments made it unlikely that in 1141 Abelard could count on
the support of Geoffrey of Chartres, as had been the case (at least as he thought)
at Soissons in 1121.
This political shift also needs to be related to a new hostility to urban communes
evident in France in the years 1137-41. While our evidence for what was going
on in towns in France during these years is limited, the reports of violent repression
of dissent provide an important backdrop for understanding the rhetoric about
anarchy and rebellion that Bernard feared Abelard's theology would encourage.
The gulf in prevailing attitudes between townsmen and traditional monastic con-
ceptions of authority is revealed in a record of the 1137 dispute between the
burghers of Vezelay and the abbot of the monastery that controlled the city. Abbot
Alberic, subsequently made cardinal bishop of Ostia by Pope Innocent II in 1138
and a loyal servant of Bernard of Clairvaux, refused to allow the burghers to
establish a commune.68 Soon after the death of Louis VI (August 1, 1137), one of
the first actions of the young Louis VII was to crush a revolt of the commune of
Orleans.69 In the spring of 1138 the commune of Poitiers joined several towns and
castles in a military alliance, prompting the young Louis, on Suger's advice, to
dissolve the commune by force. Theobald of Champagne declined to become in-
volved. The king's reprisal, including the forced removal of a hundred hostages
from Poitiers, was so harsh that Suger pleaded for clemency. In any case, all talk
of establishing a commune ceased.70 Even more serious was the challenge pre-
sented by the commune of Reims, an important city and center of a large arch-
diocese, left without a bishop "for roughly two years" after the death of Arch-
bishop Rainald (January 13/14, 1139).71 After Rainald died, the mayor and
commune of Reims were charged by Louis VII with encroaching on the privileges
of the cathedral chapter.72
This turbulence in Reims prompted Bernard of Clairvaux to lament the absence
of episcopal authority both in Reims and in Langres in a letter to Louis VII written
in 1139, in which he defended the appointment to the see of Langres of his kins-
man and prior, Godfrey of La Roche-Vanneau. The bishop of Langres was tech-
68 This rich narrative, preserved in the Cartulaire general de l'Yonne, ed. M. Quantin (Auxerre,
1854), 1:313-23, is included in Hugh of Poitiers: The Vezelay Chronicle, trans. John Scott and John
0. Ward (Binghamton, N.Y., 1992), pp. 318-31; a commune was eventually formed in 1152, sup-
ported by the count of Nevers, but it was crushed by Louis VII. See the continuation to Suger's life of
Louis VII, Vie de Louis le Gros par Suger suivie de l'Histoire du roi Louis VII, ed. Auguste Molinier
(Paris, 1887), pp. 174-76, and Hugh of Poitiers, Chronique 2, in Monumenta Vizeliacensia, ed. R. B.
C. Huygens, CCCM 42 (Turnhout, 1976), pp. 427-42; Huygens reprints the important study by A.-
A. Cherest (1862-68), relating to the civic violence, on pp. 1-194. Bernard often wrote to Alberic, as
in Epp. 219 and 230-32 (SBOp 8:80-81 and 100-104; 2:22-30 and 62-68).
69 Suger, De glorioso rege Ludovico 1, ed. and trans. Gasparri, p. 156; Louis subsequently recognized
some of its privileges in January 1138: Luchaire, Etudes sur les actes de Louis VII, no. 15, p. 103.
70 Suger, De glorioso rege Ludovico 6, ed. and trans. Gasparri, pp. 166-72; Marcel Pacaut, Louis
VII et son royaume (Paris, 1964), pp. 40-41.
71 See n. 20 above.
72 Recueil, 16:5-6, nos. 8-9; the 1138 date for Rainald's death, and thus the development of the
commune, is followed by Vermeesch, Essai sur les origines, p. 124 (n. 57 above).

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nically the ecclesiastical authority to whom Bernard owed obedience.73 Bernard

also urged the pope to hasten the appointment of a new archbishop, "lest the
insolence of the people of Reims scatter whatever remains."74 Sometime in 1139
Innocent II wrote to Louis VII granting the licentia eligendi for the election of a
suitable candidate, following the advice of Geoffrey of Chartres, Hugh of Auxerre,
and Alvisus of Arras. The pope also demanded that Louis suppress "those de-
praved assemblies of Reims which are called compagnies and restore both the
church and the city into that condition and freedom in which it was in the time
of your father and our brother, Archbishop Rainald, and that [Louis] restore the
damage which has been brought on the church and ecclesiastical persons by citi-
zens."75 The use of a French word within the papal instruction is of particular
interest, as it reflects the sophistication of civic organization. The term compagnia
was also used at this time in Genoa and Pisa to refer to a unit of organization
within the city that could provide one hundred soldiers.76 In a separate letter to
the clergy and people of Reims issued on April 30 (1140?), Innocent II condemned
"the new laws or customs" of Reims and prohibited, under threat of anathema,
that anyone should try to make a commune (communia) in Reims. While Louis
VII had initially wanted his brother, Henry, to become archbishop of Reims, a
counterproposal was put forward that Bernard of Clairvaux take the position.
Bernard declined the offer, but subsequently recommended that Samson de Mau-
73 Ep. 170.2 (SBOp 7:384; 1:718): "Heu! Corruit virgo Remensis ecclesia; non est qui sublevet eam.
Corruit et Lingonensis; non est qui porrigat manum." Bernard had demanded a new election after the
initial election to the see of Langres in 1138 of a Cluniac monk, William of Sabran, supported by Peter
the Venerable. Constable establishes that Godfrey was probably not consecrated until after June 25,
1139: "The Disputed Election" (above, n. 19), p. 147. Bernard lamented again this tendency of Louis
VII to refuse to allow an election to take place in various churches, notably Bourges, Chalons-sur-
Marne, Reims, and Paris, for personal benefit, in Ep. 222.5 to Joscelin of Soissons and Suger, both
counselors to Louis VII in 1143 (SBOp 8:88; 2:40).
74 Bernard, Ep. 318 (SBOp 8:251; 2:338-39). Innocent sent Ep. 432 (PL 179:497B-D) to Louis VII
in 1139, granting license to elect an archbishop of Reims after the recent death of Rainald.
75 Innocent II, Ep. 432, PL 179:497D: "Et quoniam te Deus in regem eligi et ungi voluit ... injun-
gimus quatenus provos illos Remensium conventus, quos compagnias [recte compagnies] vocant, po-
testate regia dissipes, et tam ecclesiam quam civitatem in eum statum et libertatem in qua erat tempore
egregiae recordationis patris tui et fratris nostri Rainoldi archiepiscopi nuper defuncti reducas, damna
vero quae Ecclesiae et ecclesiasticis personis a civibus sunt illata eis facias restaurari." In PL 179:497D
"compagnies" is printed as "compagnias," which has no sense. The correct spelling, however, is given
by Varin, Archives administratives, 1:301-2; and Brial in Recueil, 15:394, correctly prints "Compag-
nies," following the text in Etienne Baluze, Miscellenea novo ordine digesta, ed. J. D. Mansi, 2nd ed.,
4 vols. (Lucca, 1761-64), 2:165, and 1st ed., 7 vols. (Paris, 1678), 5:410. Baluze reports that he took
his text from an unidentified manuscript of Arras ("ex vet. codice Atrebatensi").
76 Vermeesch, Essai sur les origines, pp. 124-25 (n. 57 above) does not comment on Innocent's Ep.
432 or the significance of a French word being used in his letter. Brial (Recueil, 15:394) glosses com-
pagnies as meaning the same as communias, although in the context of Innocent's letter these assem-
blies (in the plural) are clearly distinct from the communia or commune. The term compagniae is used
in the plural in Caffari Annales, the annals of Genoa in entries for 1102 and 1130, ed. G. Pertz, MGH
SS 18:11.5, 14.8, and 18.9; see also Annali genovesi di Caffari, Fonti per la Storia d'Italia, 4 vols.
(Rome, 1890-1926), 1:5, line 2; 1:25, line 8; and 1:40, line 15. In the Mittellateinisches Worterbuch,
2 (Munich, 1999), p. 1026, campagnia is defined as militum centuria, or a group of one hundred
knights.

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voison, a cleric of Chartres, accept the post.77 Samson's appointment was closely
connected to the desire of Suger and Louis VII to crush any criticism of ecclesi-
astical authority.78 Samson was eventually consecrated by Joscelin of Vierzy,
bishop of Soissons and a close friend of Suger of Saint-Denis.79
On the very same day that a priest, supported by the commune of Reims, was
"defiling" the Abbey of Saint-Symphorien, by celebrating Mass in the church,
Bernard was warning students in Paris about the importance of conversion to the
religious life and the dangers presented by the schools of Paris. While Abelard
never addressed himself to the specific issue of ecclesiastical privileges or the theory
of the commune, he was merciless in his Ethics about prelates who abused the
power of binding and loosing, a power, he argued, that had been given to the
apostles personally and that was lost by prelates who abused their authority. Such
arguments, even if expressed by Abelard with more subtlety than in popular an-
ticlerical preaching, were political dynamite in a situation in which episcopal
power was being directly challenged.80 Abelard was an ethically conscious theo-
logian rather than a political theorist. While he disagreed with the crude anticler-
icalism of preachers like Tanchelin of Utrecht and Peter of Bruys, Abelard was
insistent that their arguments needed to be countered by reason rather than by
blind appeal to authority.81 The increasingly polarized political situation in the
late 1130s undoubtedly fueled Abelard's interest in ethical issues. His ethical
teaching appealed to those who disliked the way ecclesiastical authorities were
invoking the cause of "religious reform" to legitimize very traditional ecclesiastical
authority within an urban situation. Abelard was blamed by his critics for pro-
moting radical challenges to the established order.
77 Bernard, Epp. 449 and 210 (SBOp 8:426-27 and 69; 2:610-13 and 1:890-91). William of Saint-
Thierry reports this nomination in Vita prima 1.14, PL 185:265A. Louis's desire to appoint his brother
Henry is mentioned in a charter of Samson, issued in 1140, that is highly critical of the king: Recueil,
16:6, no. 10.
78 Jaffe-Wattenbach, no. 8030; Varin, Archives administratives, 1:300-301, reprinted as Innocent II,
Ep. 406, PL 179:468D-469B: "Cujus rei gratia universitati vestrae mandamus et apostolica auctoritate
praecipimus, quatenus in Remensem civitatem novas leges sive consuetudines nullatenus inducatis; sed
potius ipsam in eo statu et libertate penitus dimittatis, in qua tempore fratris nostri bonae memoriae
R. archiepiscopi vestri noscitur exstitisse. Si qui vero communiam facere in eadem civitate praesump-
serint, hujuscemodi factum irritum ducimus, et ne apud vos eadem communia fiat, sub pena anathe-
matis, auctoritate apostolica prohibemus. Datum Laterani II Kalendas Maii." Varin (1:300) notes that
this document was originally dated to 1140 by Pierre Cocquault (d. 1645), who reports that he had
sighted the original, in his unpublished Histoire de l'eglise, ville et province de Reims, 5 vols., 2:426
(preserved at Reims, Bibliotheque municipale). It was redated to 1139 by Guillaume Marlot (1596-
1667), Histoire de la ville, cit et universite de Reims, metropolitaine de la Gaule belgique, divisee en
douze livres, contenant l'estat ecclesiastique et civil du pais, 4 vols. (1662-79; repr. Reims, 1843-46),
2:330. More work is needed on the dating of these documents.
79 Suger dedicated his history of Louis VI to Joscelin of Vierzy: Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. Henri
Waquet (Paris, 1964). Joscelin was teaching in Paris, probably at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame
ca. 1110-12, when his student Goswin challenged Abelard, then at Sainte-Genevieve, in disputation:
Vita Goswini, in Recueil, 14:444.
80 Peter Abelard, Ethics, ed. David Luscombe (Oxford, 1971), pp. 112-26; see also one passage in
the Liber sententiarum, quoted in Capitula haeresum XIV, ed. Eligius-Marie Buytaert, CCCM 12
(Turnhout, 1969), p. 480.
81 Theologia "Scholarium" 2.62, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13:439.

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William of Saint-Thierry tells us that he interru

of Songs when he came across the Theologia o
of his sententiae or teaching.82 He set about wri
dangers of Abelard's teaching, which he then sen
of Clairvaux and Geoffrey of Chartres during Lent 1140:
For Peter Abelard teaches new things again, writes new things; his books cross the seas
and traverse the Alps; his new opinions and dogmas about faith are carried through the
provinces and kingdoms, are preached with celebration and are freely defended, so much
that they are said to have authority in the Roman curia.83
Similar alarm is expressed in the letter of Archbishop Henry of Sens, all the more
valuable because he is not repeating the phrases of Bernard:
Therefore, since throughout almost the whole of Gaul in the cities, townships, and cas-
tles, not only in schools, but in trivial talk, there is disputation about the Holy Trinity,
which is God, by students, not only by the lettered or advanced ones, but by boys and
simpletons or certainly by fools, many other things, completely unheard of and quite
absurd, are being proclaimed that are clearly opposed to the catholic faith and the au-
thorities of the holy Fathers.84
This rhetoric about public discussion of the Trinity cannot be dismissed simply as
a literary trope. William of Saint-Thierry, Bernard, and Henry Sanglier were all
concerned at the level of discussion of core Christian teachings outside an orga-
nized framework. Their alarm was provoked by the possibility that Abelard's
criticisms of authority could be used as a pretext for schism and revolt.
The fears expressed by William of Saint-Thierry about Abelard's influence make
much more sense if they were formulated in Lent 1140 rather than in Lent 1139.
At the Second Lateran Council, held in April 1139 to consolidate ecclesiastical
unity after the death of Anacletus II (d. January 25, 1138), Arnold of Brescia had
been expelled from Italy. Sometime after the council, he attached himself to Ab-
elard on the Montagne Sainte-Genevieve, where he and Hyacinth Bobone, a senior
subdeacon from an important Roman family (subsequently made a cardinal in
1144 and Pope Celestine III in 1191), defended Abelard's cause against Bernard.85
Otto of Freising is less precise than John of Salisbury, but he records that Arnold
had been expelled during the Lateran council and that he had Abelard as a
82 William of Saint-Thierry, Letter to H. and H., introducing Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei, ed.
Jean Dechanet, Lettre aux freres du Mont-Dieu (Lettre d'or), Sources Chretiennes 223 (Paris, 1975),
p. 136.
83 William, Ep. 326, PL 182:531B; ed. Leclercq, "Les lettres de Guillaume de Saint-Thierry," p. 377:
"Petrus enim Abaelardus iterum nova docet, nova scribit, et libri eius transeunt maria, transsiliunt
Alpes, et novae eius sententiae de fide, et nova dogmata per provincias et regna deferuntur, celebriter
praedicantur et libere defenduntur, in tantum ut in curia etiam Romana dicantur habere auctoritatem."
84 Ep. 337, ed. Leclercq, "Autour de la correspondance" (above, n. 2), pp. 187-88: "Itaque cum
per totam fere Galliam in civitatibus, vicis et castellis, a scholaribus, non solum intra scholas, sed etiam
triviatim, nec a litteratis aut provectis tantum, sed a pueris et simplicibus, aut certe stultis, de Sancta
Trinitate, quae Deus est, disputaretur, insuper ab eisdem alia multa, absona prorsus et absurda, et
plane fidei catholicae sanctorumque Patrum auctoritatibus obviantia proferrentur."
85 See n. 12 above.

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teacher.86 Innocent II had used the Lateran council to reassert the right of the
Roman pontiff to control ecclesiastical positions "as if by feudal right."87 Such
claims were abhorrent to Arnold of Brescia, merciless in his criticism of corrupt
bishops and cardinals. Anacletus II had himself enjoyed the support of the Roman
population, which had prohibited Innocent II from gaining access to the Lateran
palace.88 Bernard was disturbed by what Hyacinth had been saying both about
the pope and about the curia itself.89 He linked Abelard with Arnold, "his shield
bearer," as together having wide influence: "in cities and castles, darkness is being
spread in place of light; everywhere poison is being put forward to everybody in
place of honey."90 While Bernard's sense of Abelard's responsibility for social
upheaval was clearly exaggerated, his wider concern that dangerous threats were
being made to the authority of the church, both in France and in Italy, was based
on his very real sense that if traditional structures, social, ecclesiastical, and theo-
logical, were questioned, the entire project of the reform movement was under
threat.
Bernard feared that Abelard's teachings could reignite schism and foment dis-
cord throughout Christendom. William gave particular attention to Abelard's ap-
parent implication that "the Father was full power, the Son a certain power, and
the Holy Spirit, no power at all." This was very similar to the accusation made
rather crudely at Soissons, that Abelard assigned omnipotence to the Father alone.
By 1140, however, Abelard's theological teaching had become much more devel-
oped. His teaching on redemption and on ethics could also now be interpreted as
an assault on traditional definitions of ecclesiastical doctrine. William was so trou-
bled by Abelard's definition of the Trinity that he sent a second letter to Bernard
of Clairvaux, exposing the dangers presented by the teaching of William of
Conches in his Philosophia mundi, in which he noted some of the same errors as
taught by Abelard about attributing omnipotence to the Father alone, as well as
others, such as questioning the notion that woman was taken from Adam's rib.91
There was substance to William's claim that Abelard had support in the curia.
Master Guido di Castello, cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Lata and for a short
while Pope Celestine II after the death of Innocent II in 1143, owned a copy of
Abelard's heavily annotated draft of the Theologia Christiana, as it stood in the
86 Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris 2.28, MGH SSrG 46:133: "Arnaldus iste ex Italia
civitate Brixia oriundus eiusdemque aecclesiae clericus ac lector tantum ordinatus Petrum Abailardum
olim preceptorem habuerat." Whether Otto was referring to a period of study before 1139-40 is not
clear; see Arsenio Frugoni, Arnaldo da Brescia nelle fonti del secolo XII (Rome, 1954), pp. 57-58.
87 Innocent's speech is reported by an eyewitness: Chronique de Morigny 3.3, ed. Mirot (n. 42
above), p. 70: ". . . et quia a Romani pontificis licencia ecclesiastici honoris celsitudo quasi feodalis
juris consuetudine suscipitur, et sine ejus permissione legaliter non tenetur." On the canons of the
Second Lateran Council, see n. 27 above.
88 Chronique de Morigny 3.3, ed. Mirot, pp. 68-69: "Sed quia Petrus, injustus convicarius, maxi-
main partem sibi sociaverat civitatis, in illo temporis puncto plenitudinem debiti sibi honoris adipisci
non potuit."
89 On Hyacinth, see Helene Tillmann, "Ricerche sull'origine dei membri del collegio cardinalizio nel
XII secolo," Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 26 (1972), 313-53, at pp. 350-53.
90 Bernard, Ep. 189.2-3 (SBOp 8:13-14; 1:784): "Urbibus et castellis ingeruntur pro luce tenebrae.
... Stans ergo Golias una cum armigero suo inter utrasque acies...." See above, n. 2.
91 PL 180:332-40; ed. Leclercq, "Les lettres de Guillaume de Saint-Thierry."

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early 1130s, as well as of his Sic et non.92 According to a rubric introducing

Bernard's letter to Cardinal Guido, sent after the Council of Sens, Guido "had
been a disciple of Master Peter and had high expectations of him."93 Guido had
encountered Abelard in January 1131, at the consecration of a new altar at Mo-
rigny, when he could have commissioned a copy of Abelard's draft text.94 When
the chronicler of Morigny reported this event around 1132, he had no sense that
Abelard was a dangerous figure, describing him as "a monk and an abbot, a
religious man who governed the best schools, to whom learned men used to flock
from the whole Latin world." 95 Guido was similarly esteemed within the curia for
his learning and had a reputation as a peacemaker, a quality that undoubtedly
helped him to be elected pope after Innocent's death on September 24, 1143. He
believed, with the author of the Sic et non, that discordant authorities could be
overcome by reason.96
Besides sending Bernard a copy of his own Disputatio identifying thirteen he-
retical doctrines in Abelard's teaching, William sent the texts themselves that he
found so offensive: the Theologia and the book of sentences of Abelard's teaching
on faith, the sacraments, and charity.97 The abbot of Clairvaux promised that they
should meet after Easter of that year (April 7, 1140).98 Bernard does not seem
himself to have given more than cursory attention to the actual text of the Theo-
logia or book of sentences. When preparing his own Disputatio against Abelard,
addressed to Pope Innocent (Letter 190), he drew mainly on the information about
Abelard's teaching supplied to him by William of Saint-Thierry. Bernard's treatise
92 The Theologia cum libro Retractationum and Sic et non of Abelard are listed in books that he
bequeathed at his death to Citta di Castello: A. Wilmart, "Les livres legues par Celestin II a Citta di
Castello," Revue bene'ictine 35 (1923), 98-102. This combination of texts reflects exactly the contents
of Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia 174, an early-thirteenth-century copy of a highly annotated
text that I have argued provides the draft of the Theologia "Scholarium," as sketched out by Abelard
in the early 1130s: "Abelard's Theologia Christiana and Theologia Scholarium Re-examined," Re-
cherches de thbologie ancienne et medievale 52 (1985), 109-58, at pp. 149-50.
93 Ep. 192 (SBOp 8:43; 1:840): "qui Petri discipulus fuerat et de quo potissimum praesumebat, qui
et postea Papa Caelestinus fuit." These rubrics were the work either of Geoffrey of Auxerre or of
another early secretary of Bernard, involved in preparing the register of his letters.
94 Chronique de Morigny 2.14, ed. Mirot, p. 53. Guy could have been the legate mentioned as
assisting Abelard to establish his authority at Saint-Gildas: Historia calamitatum, ed. Monfrin, p. 107:
"tandem per auctoritatem romani pontificis Innocentii, legato proprio ad hoc destinato...." Another
independent copy of Abelard's draft of the Theologia Christiana and Sic et non, as it stood in the early
1130s, survives in Tours, Bm, MS 85, from St. Nicholas, Ploermel, in Brittany. The affinity of the
Tours and Monte Cassino manuscripts, both independent copies of Abelard's text, suggests that
Guido's copy (now lost) was originally produced when Abelard was still formally attached to Saint-
Gildas.
95 Chronique de Morigny 2.14, ed. Mirot, p. 54: "Petrus Abailardus, monachus et abbas, et ipse vir
religiosus excellentissimarum rector scolarum, ad quas pene de tota latinitate viri literati confluebant."
96 Cardinal Guy also owned a copy of the Candela of Gerland of Besancon, a synthesis of patristic
texts, not unlike the Sic et non; its preface was edited by Edmond Martene, Thesaurus novus anec-
dotorum (Paris, 1717; repr. New York, 1968), 1:372-73. Bernard de Vregille summarizes why the
Candela should be attributed to Gerland the younger rather than the elder, as had been thought:
Dictionnaire d'histoire et de g&ographie ecclesiastique, 20:887. This Gerland is likely to have been a
student of Roscelin of Compiegne, who held canonries at both Besancon and Tours.
97 PL 180:249-82.
98 Bernard, Ep. 327 (SBOp 8:263; 2:356-58).

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was neither as analytic nor as comprehensive as William's Disputatio but instead

focused with greater rhetorical license on a few key doctrines where Abelard
seemed to be contradicting orthodoxy. In order to compile a definitive list of
heretical propositions, he did not simply rely on the list formulated by William of
Saint-Thierry but gave the controversial texts to an assistant, who proceeded to
come up with a list of fourteen capitula, each justified by a quotation from the
Theologia or the book of sentences. The author of the Capitula haeresum XIV
was more careful than William of Saint-Thierry; he never claimed that Abelard
taught that the Son of God was "a certain power" (quaedam potentia) or that the
Holy Spirit was "no power" (nulla potentia); instead this list opened with a state-
ment of horror at Abelard's comparison of the three persons of the Trinity to three
attributes of a bronze seal. The Capitula haeresum XIV provided the basis for the
final list of nineteen heretical propositions attributed to Abelard, although with
certain modifications. William's claim that Abelard taught the Son to be "a certain
power" and the Holy Spirit "no power at all" was retained, probably because
Bernard had already constructed much of his criticism of Abelard around the claim
that this is what he taught. The fourteenth entry of the Capitula haeresum XIV,
that Abelard attributed omnipotence to the Father alone, may have been added
because Bernard had already discussed this theme in Letter 190. Two recensions
survive of Letter 190, addressed to Pope Innocent II. In both, the treatise concludes
with a list of nineteen capitula, produced by amalgamating the list of fourteen
with William's original list of thirteen. The revised recension strengthened a few
passages and included a new reference to Abelard's commentary on the Epistle to
the Romans as containing discussion of redemption.99 Perhaps by late 1140 Ab-
elard had already seen an early version of Bernard's treatise and the list of nineteen
capitula. He reacted violently against its claims, insisting that he had been quoted
out of context and that he had not himself written the book of sentences attributed
to him. He made these claims first in his Confessio fidei "Universis" and then in
much more detail in an Apologia of which only a fragment now survives.100 Ab-
elard's desire to disassociate himself from misunderstanding of his teaching high-
lights his own fear of the way in which disciples like Arnold of Brescia might
interpret what he had to say.
As the Capitula haeresum XIV shares a number of concerns with the Disputatio
catholicorum patrum against the errors of Abelard that are not found in Bernard's
treatise, it seems logical to assume that the same assistant was at work on both
99 Ep. 190 (SBOp 8:39-40; 1:832-34). For a new edition of this list, see Mews, "The Lists of
Heresies" (n. 2 above), with discussion of a transitional version of the list, preserved in Durham,
Cathedral Chapter Library B.III.7, appended to a copy of Augustine's Adversus haereses. The reference
to Abelard's commentary on Romans is included at Ep. 190.11 (SBOp 8:26; 1:808).
100 Charles S. F. Burnett, "Peter Abelard, Confessio fidei 'Universis': A Critical Edition of Abelard's
Reply to Accusations of Heresy," Mediaeval Studies 48 (1986), 111-38, and Apologia adversus Abae-
lardum, edited by Eligius-Marie Buytaert, CCCM 11 (Turnhout, 1969), pp. 359-68. Otto of Freising
thought the Apologia was written after the Council of Sens, but this seems unlikely as neither this
work nor Thomas of Morigny's Disputatio alludes to the council: Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris 1.51,
MGH SSrG 46:74. For an edition of the surviving fragments of the Liber sententiarum, see Mews,
"The Sententie of Peter Abelard," Recherches de th&ologie ancienne et medievale 53 (1986), 159-84,
at pp. 174-83.

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occasions, namely, Thomas of Morigny. The involvement of Thomas in the cam-

paign against Abelard becomes all the more comprehensible if Bernard composed
Letter 190 in 1140 rather than in 1139.101 Thomas had been suspended by Arch-
bishop Henry Sanglier sometime in 1139, ostensibly for being absent from the
Lateran council without permission. After much tortuous negotiation involving
Hugh of Saint-Victor and other senior ecclesiastics, Thomas voluntarily resigned
from Morigny and moved to Saint-Martin-des-Champs, Paris, in mid-Lent
1140.102 This was precisely the moment when Bernard received Abelard's Theo-
logia and book of sentences from William of Saint-Thierry. At Saint-Martin-des-
Champs Thomas found a new role for himself, working on Bernard's behalf to
counter the teaching of Peter Abelard.
The meeting that Abelard had with Bernard, initially in private, and then with
witnesses, probably took place on one of the occasions when Bernard came to
preach in Paris.103 From the two versions that survive of Bernard's Sermo de con-
versione, we know that he certainly preached there on the feasts of All Saints
(November 1, 1140) and Epiphany (January 6, 1141 ).104 Bernard asked Abelard
to revise the contested passages in his writing. Two revisions survive of the Theo-
logia "Scholarium" which may attest to this process. In the first revision Abelard
appended just a few additional texts to the controversial sections of his treatise.
Traces of a more extensive revision of the Theologia are preserved in an important
fourteenth-century manuscript that I once thought might have been made after
the council at the request of Peter the Venerable.105 I now think it more likely that
these changes were made in the months between the meetings with Bernard held
over the winter of 1140-41 and the council, held on May 25, 1141.106
Bernard'- preaching in Paris was not initially successful, according to a story
communicated to Herbert of Torres by Rainald of Foigny, who accompanied Ber-
101 The Disputatio (PL 180:283-328) was convincingly attributed to Thomas by Carra de Vaux
Saint-Cyr in 1963 and by Haring in 1981 (n. 2 above); see Mews, "The Lists of Heresies," pp. 97-
102. Gastaldelli observes that Bernard did not have a monk acting as a regular secretary between 1135
and 1141, when Geoffrey of Auxerre started to carry out this role: "Le piut antiche testionianze"
(above, n. 32), p. 28.
102 Chronique de Morigny 3.4, ed. Mirot, pp. 75-76. Thomas subsequently wrote Bernard a letter
from Saint-Martin des Champs, asking for assistance as he was not happy there, printed as Bernard,
Ep. 476, PL 182:682D-685A.
103 Geoffrey of Auxerre, De vita et miraculis S. Bernardi 49, ed. Lechat (above, n. 35), p. 115:
"Cumque et in itinere et in reditu scolaribus Parisiensibus, ut semper solebat, fecisset de conversione
sermonem, vespere coepit contristari...." See also Gastaldelli, "Le piii antiche testimonianze," pp.
20-26.
104 Leclercq dated the two occasions to 1139-40 in his introduction to the Sermo de conversione,
in SBOp 4:62 n. 1, but Gastaldelli modified this to 1140-41 in "Le piui antiche testimonianze," pp.
60-61.
OS This is the version that I identify, after the sigla of its manuscripts, as TSch AP in CCCM 13:243-
48 and 282-83.
106 This version, found in Oxford, Balliol College, MS 296, I identify as TSch 0 in CCCM 13:286-
90, where I argued that these were the passages that Peter the Venerable says Abelard removed from
his writing in Ep. 98, ed. Constable, 1:259: "Addidimus hoc monitis nostris, ut si qua catholicas aures
offendentia, aut scripsisset aut dixisset, hortatu eius et aliorum bonorum et sapientum, et a uerbis suis
amoueret, et a libris abraderet. Et factum est ita." I am now persuaded by the argument of Marenbon
that these changes precede Sens: The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (above, n. 21), p. 71.

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nard on his visit to the city on January 6, 1141.

there was apparently no response from the stud
house of a friendly archdeacon that God must be
day Bernard succeeded in winning over some cler
city with the abbot of Clairvaux, when he sugge
more clerics change their way of life.107 Geof
students who heard Bernard preach and decided
the course of 1141, he became Bernard's secret
register of his correspondence, and thus for hel
He described his feelings of frustration with Abelard at length in a sermon in
which he recalled his former teacher's presentation of redemption. For Geoffrey,
the key issue that prompted his disillusion with Abelard was that he spoke only
about the ethical example set by Christ, not about his redemption of humanity
from sin: "I remember that I once had a teacher.... Gutting the price of redemp-
tion, he commended nothing else for us in the sacrifice of the Lord's passion than
an example of virtue and an incentive for love." 109 Geoffrey thought that Abelard
put too much emphasis on the importance of ethical living, and not enough on
the role of grace, administered through the sacraments.
These doctrinal arguments came to a head at the council. The accounts offered
by Henry Sanglier, Bernard, and Geoffrey of Auxerre all agree that when the
controversial assertions were read out in public at the assembly and Abelard was
given the opportunity to defend himself, he seemed to hesitate in responding, and
then appealed to the authority of Rome. The description given by Henry Sanglier
is significantly fuller than that given by other witnesses. His phrases are wordy,
but they contain much detail:
When the lord abbot brought forth the book of the Theologia of Master Peter and put
forward what he had commented were the absurd, or rather clearly heretical, headings
from the same book, so that Master Peter could either deny that he had written them
or vindicate or correct them if he had said them himself, Master Peter Abelard seemed
to hesitate and prevaricate, did not wish to reply, but-although he had been given a
free hearing, a safe place, and fair-minded judges-he appealed to your presence, Holy
Father, and left the assembly with his followers. We, however, although that appeal
seemed less than canonical, yielding to the Holy See, did not wish to offer a judgment.
Besides, the day before his appeal to you, we condemned the teachings of his depraved
doctrine, frequently read out and read out again in public hearing and proven to be not
only false but even clearly heretical, as shown by the abbot of Clairvaux both through
107 Conrad of Eberbach, Exordium magnum Cisterciense 2.13, ed. Bruno Griesser, CCCM 138
(Turnhout, 1994), pp. 84-85. This story is based on the Liber de miraculis of Herbert of Torres, PL
185:1326D-1327D; Gastaldelli argues that it goes back to a reliable source in Rainald of Foigny: "Le
piui antiche testimonianze," p. 20.
108 Geoffrey of Auxerre, Super Apocalypsim, Sermo 18, ed. Ferruccio Gastaldelli (Rome, 1970), p.
218. Geoffrey here reports a sermon different from Bernard's Sermo de conversione.
109 Gastaldelli, "Le piii antiche testimonianze," p. 21, quoting from Troyes, Bm, MS 503, fol. 13v:
"Ceterum mihi aliquando magistrum fuisse recordor.... Siquidem pretium redemptionis evacuans,
nil aliud nobis in sacrificio dominice passionis commendabat, nisi virtutis exemplum et incentivum
amoris." Helinand of Froidmont, who recalls that he was taught by a student of Abelard, Ralph the
Grammarian, reports this sermon of Geoffrey at length in his Chronicon: PL 212:1035A-C.

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the truest reasoning and by the authorities of blessed Augustine and of the other holy
Fathers, because they had infected many and penetrated with their plague the innermost
depths of their hearts.110
Neither Bernard of Clairvaux, Geoffrey of Auxerre, nor Samson of Reims reveals

the detail mentioned by Henry Sanglier, that the bishops had already condemned
the controversial capitula on the eve of the day scheduled for the public hearing.
In the much shorter letter about the council sent by Archbishop Samson to the
pope, which was widely circulated within Bernard's correspondence (unlike the
letter of Sanglier), it was claimed simply that the bishops had refrained from mak-
ing a judgment about Abelard as a person but condemned only his teaching.1"'
Our one source to put emphasis on this precouncil meeting of Bernard with the
bishops is Berengar of Poitiers.112 In the light of this precouncil meeting, Abelard
would have known that it was pointless to defend his case and that it was more
sensible to appeal to a higher court. Whether or not we follow the suggestion of
C. Stephen Jaeger, that Abelard was modeling his silence on the stance Jesus took
at his own trial, an appeal to Rome was the only option left to him.113 John of
Salisbury reported that Bernard followed a very similar procedure at the Council
of Reims in 1148, in seeking to influence the bishops prior to a public hearing of
the case of Gilbert of Poitiers. 14 Bernard was sidestepping the normal process of
conflict resolution.
In their presentations of the council, both Berengar of Poitiers and Geoffrey of
Auxerre imply, from different perspectives, that Bernard was the driving force in
the condemnation against Abelard. Yet other forces were also anxious to see Ab-
110 Ep. 337, ed. Leclercq, "Autour de la correspondance" (above, n. 2), pp. 189-90: "Dominus
Abbas cum librum Theologiae magistri Petri proferret in medium, et quae annotaverat absurda, immo
haeretica plane capitula de libro eodem proponeret, ut ea magister Petrus vel a se scripta negaret, vel,
si sua fateretur, aut probaret, aut corrigeret, visus est diffidere magister Petrus Abaelardus et subter-
fugere, respondere noluit, sed, quamvis libera sibi daretur audientia tutumque locum et aequos haberet
iudices, ad vestram tamen, sanctissime Pater, appellans praesentiam, cum suis a conventu discessit.
Nos autem, licet appellatio ista minus canonica videretur, Sedi tamen Apostolicae deferentes, in per-
sonam hominis nullam voluimus proferre sententiam. Ceterum sententias pravi dogmatis ipsius, quia
multos infecerant et sui contagione ad usque cordium intima penetraverant, saepe in audientia publica
lectas et relectas, et tam verissimis rationibus quam beati Augustini aliorumque sanctorum Patrum
inductis a domino Claraevallensi auctoritatibus, non solum falsas, sed et haereticas esse evidentissime
comprobatas, pridie ante factam ad vos appellationem, damnavimus."
1" Ep. 191 (SBOp 8:41-42; 1:738), with bishops listed by rank of their sees: Samson, archbishop
of Reims, 1140-61; Joscelin of Vierzy, bishop of Soissons, 1126-52; Geoffrey, bishop of Chalons-sur-
Marne, 1131-42; and Alvisus, bishop of Arras, 1131-48.
112 Rodney M. Thomson, "The Satirical Works of Berengar of Poitiers," Mediaeval Studies 42
(1980), 89-138, esp. pp. 111-30.
113 C. Stephen Jaeger, "Peter Abelard's Silence at the Council of Sens (1140)," Res publica litterarum
3 (1980), 31-54. On the appeal to Rome as a legitimate action against Bernard's attempts to have
him accused of heresy, see Kolmer, "Abaelard und Bernhard von Clairvaux in Sens" (n. 2 above). Fulco
of Deuil reports that Abelard himself had once thought of appealing to Rome in order to protest the
complicity of the bishop of Paris and the canons of Notre-Dame in his castration, but warned him
about the corruption of the Roman curia: ed. Victor Cousin, Petri Abaelardi Opera, 2 vols. (Paris,
1849-59), 1:706. (This passage was censored in the version of Ep. 16 reprinted by Migne, PL
178:375A.)
114 Historia pontificalis, ed. and trans. Chibnall (above, n. 12), p. 17.

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elard silenced. Bernard agreed to attend the council only when persuaded by cer-
tain unnamed "great people.""5 Some inkling of these unnamed figures can be
gleaned from John of Salisbury's account of the Council of Reims, to which Ber-
nard and Gilbert of Poitiers were summoned in 1148. John observes that there
was an opinion that Suger of Saint-Denis had manipulated the situation so that
the pope would be forced to side with Bernard in condemning Gilbert. In this way
Suger was able to secure the loyalty of the bishops, who would be forced to side
with Bernard. John reports that the cardinals of Rome were profoundly critical
of the way Bernard had operated at the councils of both Sens and Reims:
They agreed among themselves to support the cause of the bishop of Poitiers, saying
that the abbot had attacked master Peter in exactly the same way.... They suspected,
or made a show of suspecting, that the abbot wished to win the English and Gallic parts
of the church to his side and induce them to follow him.... As far as I recall there was
not a single cardinal except Alberic bishop of Ostia of holy memory who was not whole-
heartedly opposed to the abbot in spirit and deed; saying-falsely as I believe-that the
abbot of St Denis, who was acting as regent for the king in France, and the leading men
of the church had been called together for the express purpose of forcing the papacy to
accept the abbot's views under threat of schism."16
John's analysis of the proceedings at Reims suggests what may have been hap-
pening behind the scenes at Sens. Bernard certainly was under pressure to attend
the council from those who feared the risk of scandal if he did not attend. The
most powerful churchman in France in 1141 was not Henry Sanglier, or Samson,
archbishop of Reims, but Suger of Saint-Denis."17 While Suger's name is never
mentioned in proceedings of the council, it is hard to imagine that he would not
have been in attendance. Bernard was a powerful speaker who could easily out-
class Abelard in public oratory. More was at stake, however, than simply the errors
of Peter Abelard. Samson had been consecrated archbishop only in April 1140;
even in November his authority was being challenged by supporters of the com-
mune of Reims. Given Abelard's known association with Arnold of Brescia, it was
helpful to both Suger and the king for any challenge to the established order to
be punished as heresy. They feared that society could be torn apart if orthodoxy
was not maintained. Bernard felt obliged to defend a political and moral order
that he had helped put in place. His powers were in the realm of oratory and
charisma rather than of political influence. He never understood what Abelard
was saying at a technical level, but he was aware of the ramifications that could
flow from challenges to ecclesiastical authority.
In the initial letter to the pope that he composed immediately after the council
(Letter 330), Bernard did not talk about his involvement in the campaign against
Abelard. He was outspoken, however, in expressing alarm about the extent of
debate about traditional doctrines taking place in France."8 Bernard drew a direct
115 Bernard, Ep. 189 (SBOp 8:14; 1:786): "consilio amicorum"; Geoffrey of Auxerre, Vita prima
5.13: "Postea tamen magnorum virorum monitis flexus...."
116 Historia pontificalis, ed. and trans. Chibnall, pp. 19-20.
117 Suger's pragmatism is well brought out by Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger of St.-Denis: Church and
State in Early Twelfth-Century France (New York, 1998).
118 Ep. 330 (SBOp 8:267-68; 2:364). See n. 1 above.

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comparison between the political challenge prese

logical upheaval threatened by Abelard and Arnold of Brescia; he was also con-
cerned about Abelard's boasting that he had close friends among the clerics and
cardinals of Rome. An earlier draft of this letter preserves a codicil:
Hyacinth has shown many evil things to us; yet he could not do what he wanted. But it
seems that I must patiently put up with him, who has not spared either your person or
the curia, within the curia itself, as my Nicholas, or rather yours as well, will better
report in person. He will be able to intimate to you more fully not only these things but
everything else, just as he is more fully aware of them. >19
This comment about Hyacinth Bobone demonstrates the clear link in Bernard's
mind between Abelard and support given him by those who sympathized with
Anacletus. Bernard had a real fear of the political implications of senior clerical
support for Abelard and of the undermining of the authority of Innocent II.
Whether Letter 330 was actually sent is not certain. The rubric about Nicholas
speaking in person about what Hyacinth was saying was then transferred to the
end of Letter 338 to Cardinal Haimeric, the influential chancellor in the papal
curia (whom Bernard did not realize had died only three days after the Council
of Sens, on May 28, 1141).120 This rubric was then added to the end of Letter 189
to Pope Innocent, in which Bernard repeated many of his earlier claims about "a
new faith being forged in France" and the collaboration of Abelard and Arnold
of Brescia. Bernard may have been prompted to give a fuller account of his actions
by the more detailed and measured account prepared by Henry Sanglier.
It is possible, but not certain, that the Nicholas to whom Bernard was referring
was Nicholas of Montieramy, in 1140-41 a gifted notary who was then acting as
secretary to Bishop Hato of Troyes. Deutsch used the fact that Nicholas of Mon-
tieramy returned from Rome in late August 1141 to join a meeting of Hato,
Bernard of Clairvaux, and Geoffrey of Chartres at Troyes as ancillary evidence
that the council took place in 1141 rather than 1140.121 Because Nicholas was
already in Rome in February-March 1141, conducting business on behalf of Hato
of Troyes, Giles Constable suggested that the Council of Sens could have taken
place in June 1140 but that Nicholas did not return with the papal condemnation
until after July 1141.122 Yet Nicholas of Monti'amy, if he was indeed the mes-
senger, could quite easily have returned to France after February/March 1141 but
119 Ep. 330, as found in Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, MS Phillipps 1732, fol. 143v: "lacinctus
multa mala ostendit nobis; nec enim quae voluit potuit. Sed visus est mihi patienter ferendus de me,
qui nec personae vestrae, nec curiae in curia illa pepercit, quod melius Nicolaus iste meus, immo et
vester, viva voce referret. Non solum haec, sed et omnia cetera intimare vobis latius poterit, sicut
plenius novit." The codicil was subsequently included, without the final sentence, at the end of Ep.
189 (SBOp 8:16; 1:788). In the Berlin manuscript, not a register of Bernard's letters, this draft of Ep.
330 is followed by an important early copy of Abelard's Confessio fidei "Universis"; see Meyer, "Die
Anklagesatze," p. 413 (n. 14 above), and Constable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2:318.
120 Bernard, Ep. 338 (SBOp 8:278; 2:381-82). Haimeric drew up a charter on May 14, 1141 (PL
179:547A). He was replaced by Baro capellanus et scriptor, a position taken over by Gerard of Bologna
(subsequently Lucius II) by January 4, 1142 (col. 572A).
121 Deutsch, "Abalards Verurteilung" (above, n. 9), pp. 53-54; Peter the Venerable, Ep. 95, ed.
Constable, 1:256 and 2:162.
122 Constable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2:318-20; see Ep. 85, ed. Constable, 1:222.

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have set off for Rome again (a three-week journey) after the Council of Sens, May
25-26, 1141. The messenger to whom Bernard refers could also have been an-
other Nicholas, a monk of Clairvaux whom Bernard later considered could replace
Hugh as abbot of Saint Anastasius (Tre Fontane) in 1150.123 Another of the monks
in this early group was Stephen, appointed cardinal bishop of Palestrina on Easter
Sunday (April 7) 1141. Whether or not this Nicholas was another monk of Clair-
vaux, sent to Rome to report news about Hyacinth, it is clear that Bernard was
acutely aware of the political situation in Rome and fearful that schism could be
reopened. The intensity of Bernard's invective against Abelard was shaped by fear
that unity would be lost if Abelard's theological ideas were to gain ground.
An 1141 date for the council also explains the nonappearance at Sens of Alberic
of Reims, archbishop of Bourges (1136-41). A teacher and archdeacon at Reims
for many years, Alberic had played a key role in having Abelard condemned at
Soissons in March-April 1121.124 Bernard had unsuccessfully recommended Al-
beric to Pope Honorius II as a suitable candidate for the see of Chalons-sur-Marne
in 1126.125 Elected to the see of Bourges in 1136, Alberic attended the Second
Lateran Council in April 1139 and died early in 1141.126 The king favored his
own candidate, Cadurc, appointed royal chancellor only late in 1140, as arch-
bishop of Bourges, thus undermining the influence of Suger of Saint-Denis at
court.127 This political struggle over who would replace Alberic as archbishop of
Bourges was a crucial issue unresolved at the Council of Sens. On the very same
day that Abelard was set to defend himself at Sens (May 26, 1141), the chapter
of Bourges elected as archbishop Pierre of La Chatre, a nephew of Cardinal Hai-
meric, strongly supported by Bernard.128 This struggle over Bourges pitted Suger
and Bernard on one side against an ambitious royal chancellor on the other. This
dispute resulted in Pope Innocent II's excommunication of Louis VII late in 1141
and his placing the kingdom of France under an interdict that was lifted only
when Guy of Castello succeeded Innocent II as pope.129
A month after the Council of Sens, on the feast of John the Baptist (June 24),
Louis VII set out with an army to besiege Toulouse, with the support of Raoul of
Vermandois. As the Premonstratensian chronicle reports, Theobald of Champagne
declined to take part, eventually provoking a conflict with the king.130 Although
123 Ep. 306 (SBOp 8:223-24; 2:298).

124 Historia calamitatum, ed. Monfrin, pp. 83-87. Alberic became archdeacon at Reims in 1131:
Williams, "The Cathedral School of Reims" (above, n. 65), pp. 93-114.
125 Bernard, Ep. 13 (SBOp 7:62; 1:118-19).
126 Chronique de Morigny 3.4, ed. Mirot, p. 73.
127 On Cadurc, first attested as chancellor in late 1140, see Luchaire, Etudes sur les actes de Louis
VII, pp. 54-55.
128 Peter the Venerable, Ep. 97, with notes by Constable, 2:164; Bernard, Ep. 216 (SBOp 8:76
2:18), with detailed commentary by Gastaldelli, 2:16-17.
129 Chronique de Morigny 3.5-6, ed. Mirot, pp. 78-80. Cadurc was a canon of Bourges, who held
many posts, including those of archdeacon of Chateauroux and dean of Saint-Aignan of Orl6ans (a
position previously held by Stephen of Garlande); see Pacaut, Louis VII (above, n. 70), pp. 41-44, on
the significance of this dispute.
130 See n. 23 above. Chibnall, in a note to the passage of Orderic (6:551 n. 3), asserts that Louis left
Paris after Easter 1141 and arrived at Toulouse on June 24. Orderic implies, however (as does Chib-
nall's translation), that Louis VII set off at the time of the feast of John the Baptist: "Tunc Ludouicus

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this particular episode was a military failure, it

to subject Aquitaine to the crown, in exactly th
sought to impose ecclesiastical authority in a vast duchy that had supported
Anacletus II. Bernard of Clairvaux was only one of many people worried by the
growth of sympathy in the south for anticlerical preachers like Peter of Bruys and
Henry of Lausanne, and would himself preach against heretics in Toulouse in
1148. Geoffrey of Auxerre saw their heresy as reflecting the same poison as being
taught by Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers.131 While Abelard was as worried as
Bernard was by anticlerical preachers, he emphasized the need for rational argu-
ment rather than simply calling for authoritarian measures to resolve conflicting
beliefs.
Bernard's urgent letters to Rome had their desired effect. Innocent issued his
condemnation both of Abelard and of his teaching on July 16, 1141, imposing a
sentence of perpetual silence. The letter does not have any signatures attached
from cardinals. The precedents that it identifies are all based on the power of
councils to condemn heretics, rather than that of an individual pope. In instructing
both Abelard and all those who followed him to be excommunicated, the decree
established a new papal precedent, of great importance in consolidating papal
power.132 On the same day, the pope sent a separate note to the archbishops of
Reims and Sens, instructing that Abelard and Arnold of Brescia be confined "in
religious places" and that Abelard's books, "wherever they were found," be
burned. According to a codicil, this letter was not to be shown to anyone until it
was presented to the archbishops at a meeting in Paris.133
This meeting never took place, as Peter the Venerable persuaded Abelard to stay
at Cluny of his own free choice, and with the abbot of Clteaux arranged a rec-
onciliation with Bernard. The abbots of Cluny and Citeaux together arranged a
reconciliation by which Abelard agreed to make certain corrections to his writing;
Bernard in turn agreed no longer to preach publicly against the errors of Abelard,
who then chose of his own free will to become a monk of Cluny.134 Peter the
Venerable later reported to Heloise that the sentence of excommunication was
eventually lifted, enabling Abelard to receive the sacraments.'35 This information
iuuenis Francorum rex ingentem exercitum congregauit, ac ad festiuitatem sancti lohannis Baptistae
Tolosam obsidere perrexit." Meyer's argument that Louis would not have had time to gather an army
(n. 14 above), and that therefore the council took place in 1140, has little substance.
131 Vita prima 3.6, PL 185:311D-314C.
132 Ep. 194 (SBOp 8:47-48; 1:846-50). Apart from references to Nicaea and Chalcedon, Innocent
quotes the authority of Emperor Marcianus "to Pope John," in fact quoting from Edictum Marciani
ad Synodum Chalcedonensem, in Concilium Universale Chalcedonense, ed. Eduard Schwartz, Acta
conciliorum oecumenicorum, 2/2 (Berlin, 1936), p. 20. No variant is given of this edict as addressed
to "Pope John."
133 Innocent II, Ep. 448 (PL 179:517B-C), printed from an unknown Vatican manuscript by Ma-
billon in his 1687 edition of Bernard's letters, but not reproduced by Migne in PL 182 or by Leclercq
in SBOp. Leclercq edits this letter from Charleville, Bm, MS 67, where it occurs without the final note:
"Les lettres de Guillaume de Saint-Thierry," p. 379.
134 Peter the Venerable, Ep. 98, ed. Constable, 1:258-59, with notes at 2:164-65.
135 Peter the Venerable, Ep. 115, ed. Constable, 1:307: "Sacramenta caelestia, immortalis agni sacri-
ficium deo offerendo prout poterat frequentabat, immo postquam litteris et labore meo, apostolicae
gratiae redditus est, pene continuabat."

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was little known in the medieval period. In about 1173 a monk known as William
Godel reported this reconciliation between Bernard and Abelard, but the passage
was omitted by the chronicler of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif, who knew Godel's chroni-
cle.136 Godel, who describes himself as English, was very familiar with the history
of Sens, became a monk in 1144-45 (possibly at Pontigny, as he was familiar
with its history), but subsequently moved to a Benedictine house in Levroux, near
Chateauroux, in the diocese of Bourges.137 While he gives attention to Bernard of
Clairvaux, he was also very sympathetic to Abelard and speaks of his establishing
the Paraclete "through epistolary authority," perhaps an allusion to Abelard's rule
for the community. Far more influential as an account of the council was the
narrative circulated by Geoffrey of Auxerre, through his collection of letters of
Bernard against Abelard, along with the papal condemnation, but without the
document subsequently issued by Innocent II that rescinded Abelard's excom-
munication.138
There is no record that Arnold of Brescia was ever imprisoned in France, as the
papal edict required. John of Salisbury reports that Arnold took over Abelard's
school on the Montagne Sainte-Genevieve but failed to attract many students. He
had been attached to Abelard for a period of up to two years after being expelled
from Italy in April 1139. Arnold continued to defend Abelard's teaching even
after the Council of Sens, if in a far more crudely anticlerical form than maintained
by his teacher. At some stage in late 1141 Arnold was expelled from France, after
which he went to Zurich, under imperial protection.139 Dating Sens to 1141 also
eliminates an otherwise puzzling delay between Arnold's being expelled from
136 This passage, found in BnF, MS lat. 4893, fol. 56v, is included in the incomplete edition provided
in Recueil, 13:675; I reedit the passage in CCCM 13:291 and translate it in The Lost Love Letters, p.
38.
137 This author reports that he became a monk in 1145, the year he claims that Henry Sanglier died
(Recueil, 13:675; see above, n. 49): "Hoc eodem anno ego servorum Christi novissimus, qui totum
hoc opus ex variis historiis compilendo compegi, Monasterium intravi, aetate juvenculus, genere An-
glicanus. Hoc eodem anno Henricus Senonum Archiepiscopus moritur, succedit domnus Hugo Prae-
centor. Ab hoc ego ipse Pontifice omnes ordines suscepi praeter presbyteratum." He mentions the
abbots of Pontigny under the year 1114 (13:674) but later says (13:677) that he was ordained a priest
by Peter of La Chatre, archbishop of Bourges (1141-71), in a village called Levroux ("in vico cui
Leprosus nomen est, in Ecclesia S. Silvani Episcopi"). The chronicle concludes with the rubric "Willelmi
Godelli monachi S. Martialis Lemovic. Historiographi." Although it was asserted in the Recueil
(13:671 n. 8) and by Holder-Egger (MGH SS 26:195) that this author could not be the monk of
Limoges, because of the connections to Sens, it is not impossible that he moved to Saint-Martial, also
in the archdiocese of Bourges, from Levroux. In 1172 he reports that he met Hildegard of Bingen and
read her books. Bautier and Gilles (Chronique, p. xlv; see n. 42 above) argue that this "Godel" chron-
icle was used by the 1124-80 continuation of the Chronicon of Sens; see Uopold Delisle in Histoire
litteraire de la France, 32 (Paris, 1898), pp. 250-61, who identifies a chronicle preserved at Bayeux
as also dependent on Godel, and the fragments edited by Holder-Egger, MGH SS 26:195. Further
assessment must await a critical edition of these texts.
138 On the role of Geoffrey of Auxerre, see J. Leclercq, "Lettres de S. Bernard: Histoire ou littera-
ture?" Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 12 (1971), 1-74, reprinted in Recueil d'etudes (above, n. 2), 4:125-
225, esp. pp. 157-60.
139 John of Salisbury says that after being expelled from France, Arnold went to Italy; he does not
mention the period in Zurich: Historia pontificalis, ed. and trans. Chibnall, p. 64. Otto of Freising
was aware that Arnold had spent time studying with Abelard in France, but says that after being
expelled from Italy he went to Zurich: Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris 2.23, MGH SSrG 46:134.

181.51.140.119 on Thu, 29 Dec 2022 14:28:03 UTC
France and Bernard's warning to the bishop of Constance in 1142 about his dan-
gerous influence. Bernard's similar letter to Cardinal Guy, written either late in
1142 or early in 1143, suggests that Arnold was enjoying some support from the
legate. 140 Arnold returned to Italy not long after the death of Innocent II on Sep-
tember 24, 1143. Even before he entered Rome, there had been an attempt by the
city of Rome to restore the senate, but it had not succeeded.14'
On Innocent's death, Master Guy of Castello, a known admirer of Peter Abelard
and a good friend of Peter the Venerable, was elected as Pope Celestine II, appar-
ently because of a remarkable combination of gifts, aristocratic lineage, mental
agility, and learning. This election took place in the Lateran, "with a great crowd
of clergy and people of Rome."'142 Tragically, Celestine II died on March 8, 1144,
according to one rumor "poisoned by his own people. " 143 Otto of Freising remarks
that after the death of Celestine II, Arnold never ceased to provoke conflict with
the papacy. While it is not certain that Arnold was in Rome at this time, the fact
that both Arnold and Guy of Castello were admirers of Abelard suggests that this
is not impossible. The election of Gerard of Bologna, papal chancellor to Inno-
cent II from January 1142, as Pope Lucius II, brought about a shift in papal
policy toward the city of Rome. It was during his papacy (March 12, 1144-
February 15, 1145) that Roman senators defied the ruling of Innocent II and
reestablished the "holy senate" on the Capitol, under the leadership of Jordan,
son of Peter Leonis and brother of Anacletus II.144 When Lucius II died, after
less than a year in office, the cardinals fled to the Monastery of St. Caesarius
"out of fear of both the senate and Roman people, who had taken to arms."
There they elected as pope the Cistercian abbot of Saint Anastasius, against the
approval of the senate, who demanded a say in the election. Three days later,
Eugenius escaped the city at night. After being consecrated at the abbey of Farfa,
he established his court at Viterbo, where he stayed for eight months. Only after
he had reached a settlement with Arnold of Brescia did he return to Rome.145 By
140 Bernard, Ep. 195 (above, n. 12). See also Ep. 196 (SBOp 8:49-52; 1:856-58).
141 Otto, Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus 7.27 and 31, ed. Adolf Hofmeister, MG
SSrG 45:352-53 and 359.
142 Chronique de Morigny 3.6, ed. Mirot, p. 80; and Celestine, writing to Peter the Venerable, Ep.
2, PL 179:766C. See the reply of Peter the Venerable, who wanted to visit Celestine in Rome: Ep. 112,
ed. Constable, 1:299-301.
143 Corpus chronicorum Bononiensium, ed. Albano Sorbelli, Raccolti degli Storici Italiani 18, 4 pts.
(Citta di Castello, 1910-39), 2:22 (Cronaca A): "Anno Christi MCXL4 [sic] Celestinus secundus sedit
mensibus v, diebus 13. Hic natione Tuschus de castro Felicitatis sepultus est in Laterano, ut dicitur,
venenatus a suis." This chronicler reports the restoration of the senate in 1147, with pride rather than
hostility (2:22): "Huius tempore Senatus renovatur in alma urbe Romana." Boso uses a similar phrase
about Celestine's birth and burial in the Lateran but does not report the rumor about his being poi-
soned: Coelestini II vita, in Pontificum Romanorum ... vitae, ed. I. M. Watterich, 2 vols. (Leipzig,
1862), 2:276.
144 Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris 2.23, MGH SSrG 46:134; Continuatio Praemon-
stratensis, MGH SS 6:453. We know only that while Eugenius III was in France (i.e., from 1146),
Arnold built up a religious community in Rome, where he may have been since 1143-44.
145 Boso, Eugenii III vita, in Pontificorum Romanorum ... vitae, ed. Watterich, 2:281-82. John of
Salisbury reports that Arnold returned to Italy after Innocent's death and that he made a show of
submission to Pope Eugenius III at Viterbo in 1145-46: Historia pontificalis, ed. Chibnall, p. 64.
Chibnall's comment (p. 64 n. 2) that Arnold cannot have become associated with the political move-

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1146 Arnold had established himself as a leading preacher within the commune
of Rome.146
It was in this atmosphere of fear and suspicion of urban insurrection that
Eugenius III visited France and renewed a call for war against the enemies of
Christendom in the Holy Land and against the spread of heresy in France.147 The
social tensions in Rome were replicated throughout France. In 1146 Louis VII
reportedly established (or confirmed) a commune at Sens that guaranteed free-
doms for Jews and allowed leper houses, new synagogues, and Jewish cemeteries,
but he suppressed it a year later at the request of both the abbot of Saint-Pierre-
le-Vif and Pope Eugenius III, then in France. This led certain burghers of the city
to kill Abbot Herbert and his nephew within the monastic cloister, prompting
Louis VII to have those responsible for the crime thrown from the abbey tower,
while others were executed in Paris.148 Nonclerical critics of monastic authority
enjoyed none of the privileges accorded Abelard by virtue of his education. Similar
ment in Rome before 1147 relies on a judgment from silence. Eugenius's return to Rome in early 1146
is very likely related to the "submission" of Arnold of Brescia reported by John of Salisbury.
146 Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris 1.28, MGH SSrG 46:44. Bernard addressed Ep.
243 to the city of Rome in 1146 (SBOp 8:130-34; 2:118-26); see Antonio Rota, "La costituzione del
comune di Roma: L'epoca del comune libero (luglio 1143-dicembre 1145)," Bulletino dell'Istituto
storico italiano per il medio evo 64 (1953), 19-131; Arsenio Frugoni, "Sulla Renovatio Senatus del
1143 e l'Ordo equestris," ibid. 62 (1950), 159-74; and Robert L. Benson, "Political Renovatio: Two
Models from Roman Antiquity," in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L.
Benson and Giles Constable (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), pp. 339-86.
147 There are textually related copies of the Sic et non in manuscripts of Brescia (Biblioteca Civica
Queriniana, MS A.V.21) and Monte Cassino (Archivio della Badia, MS 174), the latter certainly de-
riving from the copy owned by Guy of Castello Brescia; see above, n. 96, and Blanche B. Boyer and
Richard McKeon, eds., Peter Abailard: Sic et non (Chicago, 1977), pp. 34-43. Perhaps also connected
to Arnold's stay in Zurich are two early draft versions of both the Sic et non and Theologia "Scho-
larium" found in Zurich, Zentralbibliothek C. 61 and Car. C. 163; for further detail on all Abelard
manuscripts, see Julia Barrow, Charles S. F. Burnett, and David Luscombe, "A Checklist of the Manu-
scripts Containing the Writings of Peter Abelard and Heloise and Other Works Closely Associated
with Abelard and His School," Revue d'histoire des textes 14-15 (1985), 183-302.
148 Geoffrey of Courlon mentions the establishment of the commune in 1146 as against the interest
of churches and barons and in favor of the Jews: Chronique, ed. Julliot, p. 476: "Anno Domini mil-
lesimo centesimo quadragesimo sexto, Ludouicus rex Communiam Senonensem fecit in dampnum
ecclesiarum et baronum. Villas nouas fecit; cupiditate deceptus, ludeis, contra honestatem fidei, quas-
dem [sic] libertates contulit, domos leprosorum, sinagogasque nouas et cimiteria, cimiterium uero
ludeorum de Braio in territorio Sancti-Stephani-Senonensis; et ideo Iudei tenere solent consualiter a
congregatione maioris ecclesie Senonensis." He mentions that the commune was suppressed by the
king in 1147 at the instruction of Pope Eugenius, by the assent of the nobles, and at the request of
Abbot Herbert, who was killed with his nephew by certain rustici within the monastic cloister: Chro-
nique, p. 478. Haimo, who continued Suger's life of Louis VII, mentions the violent punishment meted
out by the king: Vie de Louis le Gros et Histoire de Louis VII, ed. Molinier (n. 68 above), p. 160:
"[XII] Dum vero hec ita agerenter, Senonensis civitatis burgenses adversus abbatem Sancti Petri Vivi
Herbertum in iram concitati, quia communiam eorum dissolvi fecerat, eum truculenter necaverunt.
Ob cujus ultionem rex quodam homocidarum illorum de turre Senonensi precipitari fecit, quosdam
autem Parisius detruncari." The chronicle of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif wrongly assigns the murder of the
abbot to 1149: Chronique, ed. Bautier and Gilles, p. 200; this source reports that the commune was
destroyed by both Pope Eugenius and Louis VII, at the request of Abbot Herbert, who was killed "by
the commune because of his faithfulness to his church." See Vermeesch, Essai sur les origines (above,
n. 57), p. 125.

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violence occurred between monks and burghers at Vezelay in 1152, provoking

Louis VII to crush a commune established in that city.149 In Rome itself hostilities
reached such a point that in 1155 Arnold was executed, following a compromise
reached by Pope Hadrian IV and the emperor.
There was one city, however, where Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Euge-
nius III strongly supported a movement for urban independence, Tournai, tradi-
tionally dependent on the bishop of Noyon. The cause of the canons of Tournai
was another issue raised at Sens, alongside that of Peter Abelard. Bernard's sym-
pathy for the desire of the canons to acquire their own bishopric was heightened
by the fact that the bishop of Noyon was Simon of Vermandois, brother of the
seneschal of France and much disliked by monastic reformers as too close to the
king. The Historiae Tornacenses, compiled by a disciple of Hermann of Tournai
around 1160, begins its account by reporting how on Monday evening, April 21,
1141 (the eve of the feast of Sts. Rusticus and Eleutherius), a young canon of
Saint-Martin, called Henry, had a vision of three saintly bishops of Tournai: Eli-
gius, Acharius, and above all Eleutherius.150 Six days later, the young Henry aston-
ished his fellow canons by being able to relate by heart what Eleutherius had
revealed about the future destiny of Tournai. While some said that he could have
learned the skill of composing and versifying, others were convinced that he could
not have memorized this prophecy without a miracle taking place. Certain advisers
suggested that they send the report of this vision to Archbishop Samson of Reims,
Bernard of Clairvaux, and other bishops and abbots gathered together with Louis
VII at Sens to discuss the teaching of Peter Abelard, so as to ask their collective
advice about what should be done. 15 The bishops assembled with Bernard at Sens
149 Vie de Louis le Gros et Histoire de Louis VII, ed. Molinier, pp. 174-76.
150 Historiae Tornacenses partim ex Herimanni libris excerptae 1.2, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS
14:328: "Quidam adolescens concanonicus noster nomine Henricus pascali tempore, feria 2, 11. Kal.
Maii, vespertina hora, iam incumbente nocte...." See n. 29 above. The Historiae Tornacenses occurs
in Tournai, Bm, MS 169, a manuscript lost in 1940; unfortunately this part of the manuscript was not
described by Paul Faider and Pierre Van Sint Jan, Catalogue des manuscrits conserves a Tournai (Bi-
bliotheque de la ville et du seminaire), Catalogue General des Manuscrits des Bibliotheques de Belgique
6 (Gembloux, 1950), pp. 184-86. This event is also referred to in a passage in a continuation to
Hermann of Tournai, Liber de restauratione S. Martini Tornacensis, Continuatio 20, drawn from the
Historiae Tornacenses 4.3 (14:343); here it is claimed the vision occurred in roughly the twenty-fourth
year of the episcopate of Simon of Vermandois (1123-48), or 1146.
151 Historiae Tornacenses 1.2, MGH SS 14:328-29: "Licet enim quidam adolescentem dictandi et
versificandi peritum dicerent hanc vitam potuisse componere, nos tamen scientie eius non ignari, certi
eramus, huiusmodi dictaminis numquam eum assuetum fuisse, quamquam, et si eam composuisset,
nullo modo tamen eam sine libro tam cursim memoriter et cordetenus totam legere valuisset. Consilio
itaque cum religiosis viris habito, domino nostro Sansoni Remorum archiepiscopo domnoque Bernardo
Clarevallensi abbati necnon et aliis episcopis atque abbatibus, pro audiendis et discutiendis libris ma-
gistri Petri Abailardi in octava pentecostes cum rege Francorum in Senonensi urbe congregatis, visi-
onem istam scriptam transmisimus, et quid eis exinde agendum videretur, consuluimus." The same
date is recorded in Elevatio corporis beati Eleutherii Tornacensis sepultura, miraculis in Tournai, Bm,
MS 169, fols. 123r-125r, quoted by Waitz at MGH SS 14:328 n. 2 (see his description of the manu-
script at 14:272) and in Acta sanctorum Febr. III, p. 196: "Felix ille . .. per quem etiam ab incarnatione
Domini millesimo centesimo et quadragesimo primo anno corporis mei elevatio declarabitur." The
vision is dated to 1140 in the Continuatio Valcellensis (ca. 1163), MGH SS 6:459, but this chronicle
was dependent for its information on the Premonstratensian chronicle (ca. 1155), which placed the
Council of Sens in 1140: MGH SS 6:288 and 447.

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replied simply by saying that the will of God would soon be made evident. The
chronicler then explains why the vision revealed by Eleutherius was so important:
it informed the world that the city of Tournai would soon have its own bishop
again. Bernard apparently approached Simon of Vermandois at Sens about grant-
ing independence to Tournai, but without immediate success.'52 Sometime before
Christmas 1141 Hermann of Tournai set off with Archbishop Samson to Rome
to plead their cause. Hermann returned to Tournai with a letter granting them
permission to elect a bishop in 1142. Only in 1146, after Simon of Vermandois,
bishop of Noyon, fell into disgrace, did Tournai win its episcopal independence
under its preferred choice, Bishop Absalom, abbot of the Benedictine monastery
of Saint-Amand.153 A young visionary from Tournai ultimately gained a more
positive outcome from the Council of Sens than either Peter Abelard, with his
vision of an ideal philosophic community, or Arnold of Brescia, with his vision of
a restored senate and city of Rome. It was easier for Tournai to become free of
the temporal power of the bishop of Noyon than for Rome to free itself from the
temporal authority of the pope.
Tournai became an important center for diffusion of the writings of St. Bernard,
and thus in propagating the image that Peter Abelard had been condemned as a
heretic by Pope Innocent II as a result of the heroic efforts of the abbot of Clair-
vaux. A twelfth-century copy of the full register of Bernard's letters, compiled
soon after his death in 1153 (Brussels, Bibliotheque royale, MS II 1167), contains
a text of his Letter 190 to which is attached a very pure text of the nineteen
capitula. In all subsequent copies of Bernard's letter (such as Valenciennes, Bm,
MS 40, from Saint-Amand, and Douai, Bmi, MS 372, from Anchin), the text be-
comes increasingly distorted.'54 Hermann of Tournai, who traveled back from
Rome with Samson of Reims in 1142, may have played an important role in
preserving the original version of Letter 190, with the accompanying list of he-
retical capitula. This list is not included in manuscripts of Bernard's letters dis-
seminated from Clairvaux.
The Council of Sens, held on May 25-26, 1141, was most widely remembered
through collections of the letters of Bernard, assembled soon after 1153. These
letters do not give the full story, however, of the circumstances that provoked
Abelard to ask the archbishop of Sens if he could defend himself at this council
against the claims being made by Bernard of Clairvaux. While the theological
differences between the two men should not be minimized, Bernard's anxieties
about the dangerous implications of Abelard's teachings also have much to do
with the increasingly polarized political situation facing the Latin church after the
Second Lateran Council in April 1139. Arnold of Brescia had attached himself to
152 Historiae Tornacenses 4.4, MGH SS 14:343. See A. Dimier, "Saint Bernard et le retablissement
de l'6veche de Tournai," Citeaux in de Nederlanden 4 (1953), 206-16.
153 Hermann relates his own part in these events in the preface to the Liber de restauratione S.
Martini Tornacensis, written at the Lateran palace in 1142 while waiting for a response from the pope:
MGH SS 14:274; Continuatio 22-23, ibid., pp. 325-26; Historiae Tornacenses 4.6, ibid., p. 346.
154 Mews, "The Lists of Heresies" (n. 2 above), pp. 90-93. Jean Leclercq made these observations
about the Brussels manuscript but did not use it for his edition, presumably because he originally
accepted a thirteenth-century date for the manuscript: Recueil d'etudes (n. 2 above), 4:267 and 280-
81; he dated it to s. XII-XIII in SBOp 7:xiv.

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Peter Abelard in Paris and was threatening to spread a radical version of Abelard's
teaching among circles that were increasingly critical of the ecclesiastical estab-
lishment. Abelard did not himself think that his interpretation of Christian belief
entailed the radical overthrow of social or religious tradition. He did not appre-
ciate, however, the full weight of the forces that Bernard had lined up against him.
Bernard himself did not originally wish to attend the council and came only be-
cause of pressure placed on him by certain powerful individuals, quite possibly
Suger of Saint-Denis. As a leading adviser to the young Louis VII, it was in Suger's
interest to support the cause of Samson, the newly appointed archbishop of Reims,
a city whose commune was crushed sometime in 1140 or early 1141. Suger had
a vision of the French kingdom as a community united in reverence, not to the
cathedral of Sens, but to the royal abbey of Saint-Denis, whose church he was
rebuilding into a structure that was quite new. In the eyes of monks like Bernard
of Clairvaux and Suger of Saint-Denis, there were dangerous tendencies abroad,
even within Rome itself, to reject traditional notions of ecclesiastical authority.
The fact that Arnold of Brescia, a notorious critic of episcopal and papal power,
attached himself to Abelard helped make Abelard's theological critique of tradi-
tional understanding of divine omnipotence appear to be subversive thinking. As
R. I. Moore has argued, the confrontation at Sens was part of a larger process by
which new structures of authority came to be imposed.155 Papal authority was
now being invoked as the principal arbiter of orthodoxy. Social tension within
urban communities undoubtedly inflamed the way Abelard's theology was per-
ceived. For all his desire to overcome conflict through rational analysis, Abelard
was unable to overcome an extremely polarized political situation. Perhaps the
real victor of that confrontation was Suger of Saint-Denis. The construction of a
magnificent new church provided, outwardly at least, a far more effective vehicle
for creating social cohesion than either the theology of Peter Abelard or the in-
terior conversion preached by Bernard of Clairvaux.156
155 R. I. Moore, The First European Revolution, c. 970-1215 (Oxford, 2000), with comment on
the confrontation with Bernard at Sens (dated to 1140), although not in relation to Arnold of Brescia,
pp. 124-25, 158, and 190.
156 After completing this article, I was kindly alerted by Rainer llgner and Matthias Perkams to a
two-part study by Jurgen Strothmann, "Das Konzil von Sens 1138 und die Folgeereignisse 1140.
Datierung und Darstellung. Zur Verurteilung Abaelards," and "Das Konzil von Sens 1138 und die
endgiultige Verurteilung Abaelards 1140," in Theologie und Glaube 85 (1995), 238-54 and 396-410.
Strothmann argues for an 1138 date on the grounds that Baronius identifies the archbishop of Reims
as Rainald, ignoring the consistent authority of the entire manuscript tradition of Bernard's letters,
Otto of Freising's account, and the account of the miracle at Tournai that the archbishop involved
was Samson. He is unaware that Bernard could not have addressed Stephen of Palestrina as cardinal
until after April 1141. An 1141 date is also followed in an excellent forthcoming study byWimVerbaal,
Niet als meester maar als moeder: Scholing of vorming bij Petrus Abaelardus en Bernardus van Clair-
vaux (Kapellen, Belgium, 2002). That Samson was consecrated in 1140 rather than 1141 is also
confirmed by charters issued by Barth6lemy of Laon (nos. 202, of 1140; 233, of 1143; 276-77, of
1146-47; and 297, of 1148), in the forthcoming edition, Actes des eveques de Laon des origines a
1151 (Paris, 2001), prepared by Annie Dufour-Malbezin (to whom I am immensely grateful for clar-
ifying this issue).

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APPENDIX
A CHRONOLOGY, 1137-43
1137
August 8. Louis VII crowned at Poitiers.
Late August. Louis VII crushes the commune at Orleans.
1138
April. Suppression of the commune at Poitiers.
1139
January 13/14. Death of Rainald, archbishop of Reims, followed by moves against the
interests of the cathedral chapter by the commune of Reims; Louis VII warns the mayor
and commune to respect the church.
April. Second Lateran Council; Arnold of Brescia is expelled from Italy.
Between May 1139 and May 1141. Arnold attaches himself to Abelard in Paris "and makes
common cause with Hyacinth Bobone to promote Abelard's teaching" (John of Salis-
bury).
1140
Lent. William of Saint-Thierry completes his Disputatio against Abelard and writes to
Bernard and Geoffrey of Chartres, complaining about Abelard's influence.
April 7 (Easter) or soon after. A meeting is planned between Bernard and William to discuss
Abelard's teaching; Bernard starts to compose Letter 190 against Abelard and gives
controversial treatises to Thomas of Morigny to assist in the compilation of a list of
heresies (Capitula haeresum XIV).
1139-40. Commune active in Reims but is eventually crushed in 1140 (Annals of Reims)
or early 1141 by Louis VII and Theobald of Champagne.
April 14 (octave after Easter) (?). Consecration of Samson as archbishop of Reims, at
Soissons.
April 30 (1140?). Pope Innocent II excommunicates all who try to revive the commune at
Reims.
May/June-November (?). Bernard's Letter 190 in circulation; Abelard answers with Con-
fessio fidei "Universis."
November 1. Bernard preaches to students in Paris; his first meeting with Abelard. First
minor revisions to Theologia "Scholarium."
November 1140-May 1141 (?). Abelard makes more significant revisions to his Theologia
"Scholarium" and composes an Apologia against Bernard, in turn prompting Thomas
of Morigny to defend Bernard with his Disputatio catholicorum patrum against Abelard.
1141
January 6-7. Bernard preaches again in Paris; Geoffrey of Auxerre joins Bernard.
January-April (?). Abelard insists to the archbishop of Sens that he and Bernard be sum-
moned to the forthcoming council at Sens. Bernard writes to the suffragan bishops of
Sens (Letter 187).
April 6 (octave after Easter). Stephen, a monk of Clairvaux, is made cardinal bishop of
Palestrina.
April 21. Vision of Tournai.
April 27. The canons of Tournai decide to contact Bernard and Samson of Reims at the
forthcoming council of Sens, "where books of Abelard are being discussed."
May 25 (octave of Pentecost). Opening session of the Council of Sens; meeting of Bernard
with bishops in the evening.
May 26 (Monday). Public hearing of dispute between Bernard and Abelard.
May 26-early June. Bernard writes to Innocent II (Letter 330) and cardinals (Letters 192

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to Guy of Castello, 193 to Master Ivo, 331 to Stephen of Palestrina, 332 to G., 333 to
G. cardinal deacon, 334 to Guy of Pisa, 335 to a cardinal priest, 336 to a co-abbot, 338
to Haimeric). Henry Sanglier, archbishop of Sens, writes a detailed account to Inno-
cent II (Letter 337). Samson of Reims writes a brief letter (Letter 191) to the pope.
Bernard writes a more detailed account to Innocent (Letter 189), referring to the letter
of Henry Sanglier.
July 16. Innocent II issues a condemnation of Abelard (Bernard, Letter 194; PL 179:515C-
517A) and instructs that Abelard and Arnold of Brescia be imprisoned (PL 179:
517B-C).
July-August. Abelard stops at Cluny on his way to Rome. Peter the Venerable and Abbot
Rainald of Citeaux arrange a reconciliation with Bernard of Clairvaux. Abelard agrees
to become a monk of Cluny, while Bernard agrees not to preach further against him.
Abelard subsequently moves to Saint-Marcel-sur Saone, for the sake of his health.
August-December (?). Arnold of Brescia is expelled from France and goes to Zurich.
1142
April 21. Death of Peter Abelard.
Date uncertain. Bernard writes to Bishop Hermann of Constance (Letter 195) and then to
Cardinal Guido (Letter 196) about Arnold of Brescia, now in Zurich but wishing to
return to Italy.
1143
September 24. Death of Pope Innocent II.
September 26. Election of Guy of Castello as Pope Celestine II.
Between September 24, 1143 (death of Innocent II), and February 15, 1145 (beginning of
the papacy of Eugenius III), and probably during the papacy of Celestine II (September
26, 1143-March 8, 1144) rather than that of Lucius II (March 12, 1144-February 15,
1145). Arnold of Brescia returns to Italy.
Constant J. Mews is Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology at Monash
University, Box 11A, Victoria 3800, Australia (e-mail: Constant.Mews@arts.monash
.edu.au).

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The Council of Sens (1141): Abelard, Bernard, and the Fear of Social Upheaval

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342 Speculum 77 (2002)

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While Bernard's suspicion of excessive reliance on

THE DATE OF THE COUNCIL OF SENS

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1141. After occupying the principality of Calabri

A partisan vision of history is being put forward here. No explanation is given

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27 Concilium Lateranense II 28, in Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo et

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HENRY SANGLIER AND THE ARCHDIOCESE OF SENS

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Pope Anacletus 11 (1131-38) throughout Aquitaine.42 Sometime between 1136

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consecrated in 1144. The twelfth-century chron

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A LEGACY OF DISTRUST: THE COUNCIL OF SOISSONS (1121) AND ITS AFTERMATH

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nically the ecclesiastical authority to whom Bernard owed obedience.73 Bernard

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William of Saint-Thierry tells us that he interru

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early 1130s, as well as of his Sic et non.92 According to a rubric introducing

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was neither as analytic nor as comprehensive as William's Disputatio but instead

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occasions, namely, Thomas of Morigny. The involvement of Thomas in the cam-

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nard on his visit to the city on January 6, 1141.

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Neither Bernard of Clairvaux, Geoffrey of Auxerre, nor Samson of Reims reveals

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comparison between the political challenge prese

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123 Ep. 306 (SBOp 8:223-24; 2:298).

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this particular episode was a military failure, it

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violence occurred between monks and burghers at Vezelay in 1152, provoking

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