5. Letter Ten. To Bernard of Clairvaux
letter ten. To Bernard of Clairvaux In the last two years of his life Abelard found himself under mounting criticism from Bernard of Clairvaux and his allies for allegedly heretical writings and teachings. The aspersions escalated rapidly into full-scale attacks. Both of them egged on by their respective camps, Abelard and Bernard engaged in a bitterly polemic campaign of letter writing and political maneuvering. The skirmish between them peaked at the Council of Sens in 1141, which condemned Abelard as a heretic and prompted the pope to place him under a sentence of perpetual silence. The excommunication and ban of silence were not lifted formally until after a reconciliation was arranged by Peter the Venerable shortly before Abelard's death about 1142.
Had there been bad blood between Abelard and Bernard before the Council of Sens, or, to put the question less cagily, for how many years had there been bad blood between them? Many circumstances could have set the two on a collision course. One is ideological. Abelard embodied a new outlook that is often summed up in the word "Scholasticism," as opposed to the monasticism of Bernard.1
According to this dichotomy, Abelard could be seen to represent the 1. For fuller context, see Ferruolo, Origins of the Universities, 47–92, and Matthew A.
Doyle, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Schools: The Formation of an Intellectual Milieu in the First
Half of the Twelfth Century, Studi 11 (Spoleto, Italy: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, 2005).
bernard of clairvaux schools, teaching, reason, and logic, Bernard the cloisters, preaching, authority, and faith.
Another dimension to the conflict was political, in that some key supporters of Bernard were rivals or opponents of Abelard, and vice versa. Thus William of Champeaux, whom Abelard's pressure had encouraged to leave Notre Dame for St. Victor, was not merely the bishop who had installed Bernard as abbot of Clairvaux but also the teacher and personal counsellor who had saved Bernard's life by persuading him to moderate the harsh asceticism that had nearly killed him. Later Bernard lashed out against the royal chaplain and chancellor Stephen of Garlande, who backed Abelard at key moments in his life. Beyond these two celebrities, lesser figures whom Abelard had antagonized tended to gravitate toward Bernard.2 In the end, the patrons and clients of both Bernard and Abelard may have been spoiling for them to fight more than they were themselves—but the operative verb is may, since the evidence permits speculation but not conclusion.
Years before Sens Abelard may have disliked Bernard and his loyalists or at least rejected their conception of an apostolic life, if the anti-Cistercian diatribe-sermon (dated tentatively 1127–1128) known after its incipit as "Adtendite a falsis prophetis" is indeed Abelard's.3
Five years later, Abelard still refrained from naming names, but he came closer to revealing personal disregard for Bernard. In the Historia calamitatum (dated 1132–1133) he referred to "new apostles," one of whom "boasted that he had reformed . . . the life of the monks."4
And what of Bernard's views on Abelard and pronouncements about him prior to Sens? Bernard's Apologia for Abbot William (1124 or 2. Peter Dinzelbacher, Bernhard von Clairvaux. Leben und Werk des berühmten Zisterziensers
(Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998), 102 and 236–37.
3. Smits, Letters IX–XIV, 127–28. For the text and an introduction to it, see L. J. Engels, "'Adtendite a falsis prophetis,'" 195–228. For a translation and study, see
Chrysogonus Waddell, "Adtendite a falsis prophetis: Abaelard's Earliest Known AntiCistercian Diatribe," Cistercian Studies Quarterly: An International Review of the Monastic and Contemplative Spiritual Tradition 39 (2004): 371–98.
4. "novos apostolos . . . quorum . . . alter monachorum se resuscitasse gloriabatur": ed. Monfrin, p. 97, lines 1201–4; trans. Radice, p. 32. For fuller discussion, see the introduction to Letter Twelve.
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1125), a text esteemed among historians of medieval art for the light it casts on attitudes toward images during the Middle Ages, was addressed to none other than William of St. Thierry, a close intimate of Bernard's and a onetime friend of Abelard's as well, who had been involved in the Council of Soissons and who spearheaded the later one at Sens.5 The Apologia launched a frontal assault on non-Cistercian monks for their failings—but although Abelard could have imagined that it was inspired at least in part by him, it never identifies him or even makes what could be taken as a glancing reference to him.6 Similarly, Bernard's Letter on Baptism (1127 or 1128) was written in response to a request from Hugh of St. Victor (died 1141), a theologian at the school associated with one of Abelard's main rivals, namely, William of Champeaux. Furthermore, it was prompted by Hugh's questions about a series of sententiae that an unnamed contemporary had employed in teaching.7 Although it lies within the realm of possibility that the nameless teacher was either Abelard himself or one of his followers, Bernard left the person unidentified and displays no evident antagonism as he brought forth patristic citations in framing his responses.8
To move from the quicksands of speculation to surer ground, Letter Ten (probably composed in 1131) offers rich insights into the relations between the men at a stage in their lives and careers a decade before the Council of Sens. In brief, the background of the letter is that Abelard writes to Bernard of Clairvaux and takes is5. On the Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem (Apologia to Abbot William), see Conrad
Rudolph, The "Things of Greater Importance": Bernard of Clairvaux's "Apologia" and the Medieval Attitude toward Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), who provides an edition and a translation, as well as information on the correspondence between Bernard and William.
6. Clanchy, Abelard, 245.
7. The letter-treatise Epistula de baptismo is Epistula 77, edited in Sancti Bernardi opera,
7: 184–200. The introduction in the PL edition (PL 182: 1029–46) presents as unlikely the notion that the anonymous teacher would have been Abelard, on the grounds that Hugh would have been sure to identify Abelard by name rather than to leave the matter murky. Bernard speaks with impenetrable vagueness of "quemdam . . . nescio quem (nam non nominas)" (some man . . . I know not whom [for you do not name him]): Sancti Bernardi opera, 7: 185.
8. Dinzelbacher, Bernhard von Clairvaux, 112.
bernard of clairvaux sue with him on a point of liturgy. Through Heloise Abelard has learned that Bernard had found fault with the wording of the Lord's
Prayer followed by the nuns of the Paraclete. Abelard first seeks to prove that the Paraclete wording is preferable to that followed by almost all other Latin Christians. Then he blasts aspects of the liturgy employed by the monks of Bernard's own order, the Cistercians. But the circumstances and contents of the letter merit a fuller exposition.
Once, when Abelard is staying at the Paraclete, Heloise tells him with excitement about the long-desired visit that the quasi-angelic
Bernard of Clairvaux, the future saint and the present notability of the Cistercian order, has paid to the convent. In her report she lets drop to Abelard how disapproving Bernard was in a private interview with her that in the recitation of the Lord's Prayer at lauds and vespers the nuns used an unconventional text, particularly because it contained the word supersubstantialem (supersubstantial) instead of the word quotidianum (daily) as the adjective that normally modified "bread." Since Abelard supplied Heloise and her nuns with their
Lord's Prayer (and since Bernard must have been cognizant that the version the women followed emanated from him), and since Abelard claims to have enjoyed a special caritas, or love, from Bernard, the older man feels obliged to explain his rationale in following a text that differs from the usual one. He writes a response that illuminates his modus operandi as a philologist, his relations with Bernard, his attitudes toward the Cistercian order, and his erudition as a liturgiologist. Although the letter is devoted to minutiae of scriptural wording and liturgy that could seem narrowly and hopelessly medieval, the theoretical issues Abelard raises and the procedures of analysis he applies come across as strikingly modern—a quality that is also salient in the Sic et non.9
Although Abelard and Bernard are coupled most memorably in the confrontation that culminated in the Council of Sens, Letter Ten is the only surviving letter addressed by Abelard to Bernard.
Rather than dealing with one of the major theological controversies in which the two men became enmired, Letter Ten zeroes in upon a 9. See Rizek-Pfister, "Die hermeneutischen Prinzipien," 484.
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seemingly picayune point of liturgy. The interaction did not matter enough to either of the parties for them to mention it afterward in any extant writings. Abelard makes no reference to it in the Historia calamitatum, nor does Bernard in his correspondence. Indeed, had the two men not differed over the text of the prayer, and had Abelard not sent off this piece, we might well never have known of Bernard's visit to the Paraclete.
The letter was probably composed in 1131, and certainly before 1135, but after 20 January 1131, when Abelard had traveled from St.
Gildas in Brittany to Morigny (south of Paris, near Étampes, in the diocese of Sens) to be in attendance when Pope Innocent II consecrated an altar to St. Lawrence in the abbey church. Also present at the ceremony, alongside eleven cardinals and many bishops of the Paris region, was Bernard. By a curious chance, those attending included, in addition to Abelard himself, a half dozen figures who would come together against him at the Council of Sens a decade later.10 To sharpen the coincidence, the log of those present that is recorded in the Chronicle of Morigny juxtaposes none other than "Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, who at that time was the most renowned preacher of God's Word in Gaul" and "Peter Abelard, monk and abbot, and himself a man of religion, a director of most outstanding schools, into which men of letters streamed together from almost the whole of the Latin-speaking world."11 But the trouble of Sens that would pit the two men against each other lay a decade in the future.
At this juncture in his life, Abelard's greatest worries may well have been bound up with the practicalities of monastic living and administration, particularly both the disastrous situation at St. Gildas and the happier but equally preoccupying need to achieve official recognition and stability for Heloise and her nuns at the Paraclete. In 10. Clanchy, Abelard, 207–10.
11. Chronicon Mauriniacense, 2.14, ed. Léon Mirot, La chronique de Morigny (1095–1152)
(Paris: Alphonse Picard et fils, 1909), 54: "Bernardus, abbas Clararum Vallium, qui tunc temporis in Gallia divini Verbi famosissimus predicator erat, Petrus Abailardus, monachus et abbas, et ipse vir religiosus excellentissimarum rector scolarum, ad quas pene de tota latinitate viri literati confluebant." Compare A Translation of the Chronicle of the Abbey of Morigny, France, c. 1100–1150, trans. Richard Cusimano, Mediaeval Studies 22
(Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 2003), 103.
bernard of clairvaux the second connection, it has been speculated that Abelard may have invited Bernard to stop at the convent on this trip and that the visit may have had a formal sense, as being an inspection—not a casual visit but an official visitation, on behalf of the pope, to determine whether or not the Paraclete merited accreditation.12 At this time the Paraclete was in the process of seeking affirmation from the pope of its status. Not much later, Heloise received the papal privilege
"Quotiens illud" (dated 23 November 1131) to confirm the convent's holdings and to grant it the right to retain future gifts.13
Letter Ten comes to a halt without a valediction, but that abruptness is likelier to reflect a loss in transmission than intentional curtness.14 Even without the missing farewell, scholars would have been polarized over the tenor of the letter. Some, who see it as being even-tempered and lacking any personal edge, can point both to Abelard's claim to have been held in special affection (caritas) by Bernard and to his choice of the superlative dilectissimus in addressing
Bernard. Others, who regard it as dripping with sarcasm and hostility, can adduce reasons for supposing that Abelard had ample motives for feeling distrust or even antipathy toward Bernard from 1115 on.15
Whether the letter is sarcastic or neutral, Abelard's expenditure of effort on it betokens the seriousness with which he regarded negative comments from Bernard upon the liturgy of the Paraclete. Although the Paraclete was not a Cistercian foundation, few ecclesiastic institu12. Smits, Letters IX–XIV, 129–30, who recapitulates the speculations of Pietro
Zerbi, "'Panem nostrum supersubstantialem.' Abelardo polemista ed esegeta nell'Ep.
X," in Raccolta di studi in memoria di Sergio Mochi Onory, 2 vols. (Milan, Italy: Editrice Vita e Pensiero, 1972), 2: 624–38.
13. The bull addresses her as prioress, whereas she termed herself deaconess and abbess. See McLaughlin, "Abelard and the Dignity of Women," 295, n. 14.
14. In the personal correspondence Letter Four, from Heloise, also lacks a valediction.
15. For references, see Smits, Letters IX–XIV, 120–36. Two who perceived the relations between Abelard and Bernard as having been cordial are Arno Borst, "Abälard und Bernhard," Historische Zeitschrift 186 (1958): 497–526, at 500–509, and Edward Little, "Relations between St. Bernard and Abelard before 1139," in M. Basil Pennington, ed., Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Commemorating the Eighth Centenary of His Canonization, Cistercian Studies Series 28 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1977),
155–68. But their stance seems not to have secured proponents lately.
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tions would not have felt vulnerable to criticism from as powerful a churchman as Bernard of Clairvaux. Such susceptibility would have been especially keen at the oratory of the Paraclete, which (as noted already) received apostolic privilege only toward the end of 1131.
According to Abelard's account, the Lord's Prayer is attested in the New Testament in the two versions of the Sermon on the Mount. The Gospel of Matthew records the prayer as heard by the evangelist himself, whereas the Gospel of Luke preserves a form of the Lord's Prayer that the Gospel writer, who was a disciple of Paul and not of Jesus himself, received through others. Abelard, citing both versions in their entirety, shows that Matthew has seven petitions, Luke only five. He interprets seven as carrying greater numerological weight than five, since it is a perfect number associated with sevenfold mercy rather than an imperfect one bound up in the five senses. Because of its greater perfection, the Fathers had preferred the Lord's Prayer as Matthew transmitted it to the wording in Luke.
Yet the Lord's Prayer in the liturgy of Abelard's day (and of today) describes the bread as being quotidianum (daily, the adjective in Luke) rather than supersubstantialem (supersubstantial, as in Matthew). Abelard sees the resulting text as being a presumptuous pastiche, true to neither Jesus Christ nor any one of the Gospel writers, and he views his alternative not as being newfangled but on the contrary as clinging more faithfully to the Greek original from which the Latin of the Vulgate Gospel of Matthew was translated. (As a point of fact, the discrepancy in the adjective between Matthew and Luke is not detectable in the Greek, which has ejpiouvsin—the equivalent of supersubstantialem—in both passages. It was Jerome who rendered the word in two different fashions in the Latin. Thus Abelard is tripped up by his lack of skill in the very scriptural languages and texts that he singles out in Letter Nine as being essential objects of study.)16
16. In Sermon 14 (PL 178: 489A–95D, at 493D–94D), Abelard reiterates the argument that he advances here to justify his insistence on using the adjective supersubstantial in place of daily in the Lord's Prayer. He also deals with the question in his Explication of the Lord's Prayer, with the Incipit "We have read the prayers of many"; see Charles S. F.
Burnett, ed., "'Expositio Orationis Dominicae'—Multorum legimus orationes—Abelard's
Exposition of the Lord's Prayer?" Revue bénédictine 95 (1985): 60–72.
bernard of clairvaux Abelard's Letter Ten not only delivers a stout defense of his
Lord's Prayer but also modulates into a critique of the Cistercians for themselves being too innovative in their liturgy. This countercharge, backed by mentions of six specific innovations, would have been irksome to as prominent a Cistercian as Bernard, since the overriding aim of the Order was not to innovate but instead to renovate— to reinvigorate the spirit of early monasticism in general and of Benedict in particular.17 Furthermore, on the conceptual spectrum of Christian and Latin tradition, renewal and novelty stood at opposite poles.18
The new, in contradistinction to the renewing, was likely to result from pride and to lead to heresy. Thus Bernard of Clairvaux's letters against Peter Abelard, both before and after the Council of Sens, are replete with striking phrases that tax the controversial teacher with all the wrong sorts of newness. Two letters addressed to Pope Innocent II before the council are cases in point. In the first Bernard charges that "[a] new Gospel is being forged for the peoples and nations, a new faith is being proposed, a foundation different from what has been laid is being set."19 In the second Bernard first rails at Abelard as a new theologian and then accuses him, among many other misdeeds, of having heaped new heretical dogmas atop his old ones and of having brought forth new profanities in both words and meaning.20
In the end Bernard has demonized Abelard into being a heretical viper, filled with the venom of newness.21 Was Bernard giving tit for tat? Here, ten years earlier, it is Abelard who addresses Bernard and the Cistercians as being "newly arisen"—and Abelard's later refer17. See Chrysogonus Waddell, "Peter Abelard's Letter 10 and Cistercian Liturgical
Reform," in John R. Sommerfeldt, ed., Studies in Medieval Cistercian History 2 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1976), 75–86.
18. Beryl Smalley, "Ecclesiastical Attitudes to Novelty, c. 1100–1250," Studies in Church History 12 (1975): 113–31.
19. Letter 189.2, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 7: 13, line 21. Compare Letter 190.12, 8: 27, line 11, and Letter 330, 8: 267, line 9.
20. Letter 190.1.1–2, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 8: 17, line 14; 8: 17, line 18; 8: 18, line 25.
Compare Letter 192, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 7: 43, line 17, and Letter 332, 8: 271, line 11.
21. Letter 331, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 8: 270, line 8.
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ence in the Historia calamitatum to "new apostles" should perhaps be put in the backdrop as we strive to sort out the implications of this characterization. It is Abelard who comes up with a new conception of novitas itself, one that Bernard may have found abhorrent.
In reviewing the Cistercian liturgy, Abelard evidences a surprisingly minute acquaintance with their worship. It seems unlikely that he could have become conversant with Cistercian worship solely from secondhand information, although he had to have done so in his remarks about the rite of Milan, a city he had never visited. The extent of his familiarity with Cistercian practices raises the question of where he could have engaged in the industrial espionage necessary to acquaint himself with the ins and outs of their office. The White
Monks were often taxed with being secretive about their liturgical practices, to the extent of not permitting visiting monks from other orders to witness their forms of worship. Possibly the Paraclete itself was the venue of his "on-site" experience, if the nuns of the convent had been allowed the means to try out elements of the Cîteaux rituals.22
Whatever his source of knowledge, Abelard accuses the White Monks of being aberrant first of all in their hymnal—for rejecting traditional hymns, for introducing other unfamiliar ones, and for reusing the "Aeterne rerum conditor" (Eternal Creator of the World) throughout the year for the vigils—and for not having special devotions for the saints, even the Virgin. His roll call of other deviancies in the Cistercian liturgy includes the near absence of processions, the presence of the alleluia (which was usually set aside during Lent as a token of mourning) all the way to Easter, and other tamperings with the liturgy of Holy Week. With a backhanded magnanimity, he volunteers to be tolerant of the Cistercians for their odd practices if in turn they allow him to be true to the words and spirit of Christ in his version of the Lord's Prayer. According to him, diversity is good so long as its practitioners remain aware that common practice (usus) counts for less than logical method (ratio), and custom (consuetudo) less than truth (veritas). He comes out with a crystal-clear statement
22. Waddell, "Saint Bernard," 105.
bernard of clairvaux of principle: everyone should ensure "that usage not be preferred to logic nor custom to truth." These final assertions make the letter consonant with Abelard's own method for resolving contradictions between authorities as set forth in the Prologue to the Sic et non. Seeing that Abelard relied to some degree in the Sic et non on Ivo in both methodology and specific content, it comes as no surprise to find that in this section of Letter Ten he taps heavily Ivo's Decretum for quotations.23
How did Bernard react to Letter Ten? No reply is extant—unless the Council of Sens itself embodies the response that Bernard felt was obligatory to restrain Abelard from applying his powers of reasoning as an individual to matters of consequence to the entire
Christian community. Abelard, magister par excellence, epitomized the problems of accountability and authority that masters posed to the Church.
Letter Ten survives in a single, postmedieval paper manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 13057 (last quarter of the sixteenth or first quarter of the seventeenth century). The codex is devoted to Abelardiana, with Prior Fulk of Deuil's letter to Abelard, Abelard's Letters Two through Seven, Abelard's Letter One,
Abelard's Confessio fidei "Universis," and finally Abelard's Letter Ten.24
Abelard's Letter Ten has been translated into Italian, in an edition with few but useful notes that have helped me to supplement my own and Smits's: "Dacci oggi il nostro pane." Sermo 14 e Lettera 10, trans.
Edoardo Arborio Mella, Testi dei padri della chiesa 49 (Magnano, Italy: Edizioni Qiqajon, Monastero di Bose, 2001), 25–35.
23. Waddell, "Peter Abelard's Letter 10," 79.
24. Fulk's (or Fulco's) letter is edited in PL 178: 371–76. The omissions in the PL text of Fulk's letter can be filled by the text edited by Damien Van den Eynde, "Détails biographiques sur Pierre Abélard," Antonianum 38 (1963): 217–23, at 219. The letter reconstituted on this basis has been translated into English and can be consulted at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/fulk-abelard.html (accessed 1 July 2006). A French translation of Fulk's letter exists in Yves Ferroul, Héloïse et Abélard: Lettres et vies (Paris:
GF-Flammarion, 1996), Appendix 2, 197–205.
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Letter Ten To Bernard, venerable and most dearly beloved brother in Christ, abbot of Clairvaux, his fellow priest Peter [sends greeting].
When recently I had come to the Paraclete under the press of certain business matters to be handled there, your daughter in Christ and my sister, who is called abbess of that place,25 related to me with the highest exultation that you, after having been desired for a long time, had come there for the sake of a holy visitation and that you, not so much a human being but (as it were) an angel, had strengthened her as well as her sisters with encouragements to holiness.26
Yet privately she indicated to me that you were somewhat distressed in the charity with which you embrace me in particular, because in the daily offices the Lord's Prayer was not customarily recited there in that oratory in the same way as it is usually recited elsewhere, and since you believed that this was done on my account, that I seemed in this regard remarkable (as if for some sort of innovation).27 Having heard this, I decided to write you my justification in this regard (for what it is worth), since I was especially sorry, as is appropriate, at offending you, more than at offending all others.
It is evident, as you know, that we hold this Lord's Prayer for a certainty to have been committed to writing by Matthew and 25. The phrase "who is called abbess of that place" may well allude to the fact that when Abelard wrote the letter, Heloise was not yet officially the abbess, since the status of the Paraclete as a convent had not been confirmed by the pope.
26. The suggestion that Bernard is perceived as being an angel rather than a human being is not necessarily entirely complimentary. In a passage in Letter Twelve,
Abelard likens to angels those who deliberately surround themselves in the world with the attractions of the opposite sex.
27. The phraseology may imply that Abelard believed Bernard to accord him a special affection, but then again the wording may assume that Bernard showed caritas to everyone and that he was distressed specifically in the caritas that he extended to Abelard individually.
bernard of clairvaux Luke alone, of whom Matthew, apostle as well as evangelist, was present for this prayer when it was handed down; for which reason there is no doubt that he wrote it more fully and completely, like the whole sermon held on the mount in which it is included.28
But Luke, the disciple of Paul, was not present at this sermon and did not write what he heard from the Lord's mouth, but what he learned through the report especially of Paul (who it is a fact was not present at the sermon). In addition, he writes not that more complete speech of the Lord, which he held on the mount with the apostles, but that which he made to the throngs on the plains.29
For the Lord, when he was going to choose the apostles, went out upon a mountain, as is written [Matthew 5.1 and Luke 6.12]; but when he was going to teach the throngs, he returned to the plains
[Luke 6.17]. In fact, he ascended to the mountain and descended to the plains, so that he might show openly how much higher that teaching was by which he taught the teachers themselves. In short, as Saint Jerome attests, we know, just as self-evident truth holds, that "things that have been heard are told in one way, things that have been seen in another, and what we understand better, we also bring forth better."30
Matthew drank from the very source, Luke from the stream of the source. We do not accuse Luke of lying, nor does he grow angry at us, if we should place Matthew before him, or if we should
28. The Sermon on the Mount, which begins with the Eight Beatitudes ("Blessed are the poor in spirit" and so forth), contains the Lord's Prayer in its middle. In the Synoptic Gospels Mark makes no mention of the sermon. As Abelard elucidates,
Matthew devotes three successive chapters (5–7) to it, whereas Luke divides this material into parts.
29. The tradition that Luke was the disciple of Paul dates at the latest to Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus haereses (Against Heresies) 3.1.1, ed. and trans. (German) Brox, 3
(1995): 24, lines 5–7: "Et Lucas autem sectator Pauli quod ab illo praedicabatur evangelium in libro condidit" (And Luke also, companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him).
30. Jerome, "Prologus in Pentateucho," in Biblia sacra, ed. Weber and Gryson, p. 4, lines 38–39, quoted in his Contra Rufinum (known also as Apologia aduersus libros Rufini)
2.25, ed. P. Lardet, CCSL 79 (1982): 1–72, at 63, lines 61–62.
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prefer the Lord's Prayer which was rendered collectively to all the apostles and written by an apostle to the one which was spoken to a certain disciple, especially since it is obvious that the one of Matthew is preeminent in authority as in completeness. However, so that we may judge better about each of the two when it is (as it were) set before our eyes, it is useful to include each of the two in the present passage.
Just as Matthew writes, therefore, when he [Jesus] handed down the aforesaid prayer to the apostles, he [Jesus] said:
Thus therefore you will pray: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our supersubstantial bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation.
But deliver us from evil" [Matthew 6.9–13].
Luke in fact says as follows:
And it came to pass, that as he was in a certain place praying, when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him: "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." And he said to them: "When you pray, say:
'Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation'" [Luke 11.1–4].
Thus it is obvious that Matthew wrote more completely, as I recalled above, than Luke, since plainly the former put seven petitions in the prayer and the latter only five. Indeed Matthew's prayer was transmitted more completely to the apostles, as was fitting, and was established in that number of petitions, whereby the fullness of the sevenfold grace is signified, concerning which Paul avows that the apostles themselves received the first and superior gifts, saying: "ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit"
[Romans 8.23] and so forth.31 But Luke's prayer, which he reports 31. Isaiah 11.2–3 lists seven kinds of spirit that will rest upon the one who flowers from the root of Jesse. These seven spirits became the basis for the tradition of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
bernard of clairvaux was rendered by the Lord to one of the disciples who requested it long after the sermon held on the mount, not without cause indicates the import of its incompleteness in the very fivefold number of the petitions. For the senses of the body are five, just as the gifts of the spirit are seven. For this reason this number well suits those senses, which inasmuch as fleshly are to such a degree inferior to spiritual ones.
I think that this is not to be doubted about that one disciple, who it is apparent was not present among the disciples on the mount when the Lord handed down to them the New Covenant, in which (as we said) he included also the very prayer that that same apostle had not yet heard. Likewise, when he said "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples" [Luke 11.1] in calling to mind John [the Baptist], who was less than Christ in all ways and more incomplete, he acknowledged also that very incompleteness of his own understanding. It is often evident too that the law, which consists of five books, and was given to a fleshly people led more by its senses than by reason and avid for bodily goods more than for spiritual, was expressed figuratively through John.32 For this reason it happened fittingly that he who sought from Christ the instruction of a prayer of the sort that John had given should be obliged to receive one more incomplete than that of the apostle. Indeed, on account of its incompleteness, it was rightly foreseen by the holy fathers that in its stead that prayer which is written more completely by Matthew would come into use and would be practiced regularly in the offices of the Church.
The person who can should say (if, in spite of what has been said, he has the capacity to do so) what cause therefore existed, that we should change one word alone of Matthew but keep the rest, to wit, saying daily instead of supersubstantial. For this word dai32. The remark about the five books of course relates to the Pentateuch, while the closing reference is to John 1.17: "For the law was given by Moses: grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."
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ly does not seem to convey so well the superiority of this bread as does supersubstantial. In addition, it seems to be immoderately presumptuous to amend the words of an apostle and thus to put together out of two Gospel writers one prayer, in such a way that in it neither of the two alone seems to be adequate, and to bring it forth in a form in which it was neither spoken by the Lord nor written by any one of the evangelists. This is especially the case, since in all the rest of the texts which are recited from their writings in the Church, their words are not intermingled, no matter what the extent to which they differ in completeness or incompleteness.
If consequently anyone should censure me for innovation in this regard, let him consider whether that man is more to be censured who had the presumption to compose one new prayer from two written in ancient times—a prayer to be called not so much the Gospel writer's as his own. In sum, the discernment of the Greeks, whose "authority is greater" (as Ambrose says), brought into customary use only Matthew's prayer for the reasons that have been stated (in my opinion), saying, namely, arton imon epiousion, which is rendered "our supersubstantial bread."33 For although Luke wrote in Greek and Matthew in Hebrew, the Greeks decided nonetheless instead to favor the use of the more ancient and complete prayer of the foreign language and to follow the translation rather than the written version in their own language.34
Accordingly, unless I am mistaken, by these principles as well as by these authorities, I seem to demand censure for being oldfashioned rather than newfangled and I seem less to be criticized for presumption, I who in this matter follow particularly the Lord as well as the apostles and the obvious foresight of the Greeks. For it is beyond doubt that the apostles regularly practiced this prayer
33. Ambrose, De incarnationis dominicae sacramento 8.82, ed. Otto Faller, CSEL 79
(1964): 225–81, at 265.
34. On the notion that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, see note 81 to Letter Nine.
bernard of clairvaux handed down to them by the Lord and first written by the apostle in the same words in which they had received it from the Lord and in which the apostle had transmitted it in writing. For who would not judge that those who live in common and in so doing live a most apostolic life ought likewise to insist especially upon the teaching of the apostles?35
In short, since the Lord transmitted this prayer, either in these words according to Matthew or in those according to Luke, and enjoined that it be said as he transmitted it, who would not see that they are more than a little presumptuous, who say it in such a manner as it was never transmitted by the Lord himself or written by someone? For how great is the presumption in this prayer neither to follow something written nor to hold fast to the precept of the Lord, but rather to dare to emend what is written as well as the Lord himself, if by chance this presumptuousness can be called emendation?
All the same, I enjoin no one, I urge no one to follow me in this and to depart from customary usage. "Let every man abound in his own sense" [Romans 14.5]. Yet let that person, whosoever he may be, pay heed to that dictum, and pay heed that usage not be preferred to logic nor custom to truth. Indeed, the laws of the world as well as the teachings of the holy fathers saw fit to commend this very much to us. Book 8, Chapter 1 of the Code [of Justinian] states: "The authority of longstanding practice and distinguished use is not beneath contempt, but in and of itself it is not going to be for a moment capable of prevailing over either reason or law."36 Augustine, in On Baptism Book 4, says: "In vain do
35. The notion that those who live in common live an apostolic life is a convention attested as early as John Cassian (about 360–435), Conlationes 18.5, ed. Michael
Petschenig, CSEL 13 (1886): 509, lines 19–20, which opens with the sentence "Itaque coenobiotarum disciplina a tempore praedicationis apostolicae sumpsit exordium"
(And so the system of coenobites took its rise in the days of the preaching of the apostles).
36. Emperor Justinian I (483–565) produced the Corpus iuris civilis (529–534), a
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those who are overcome by reason raise custom as an objection to us, as if custom were greater than truth or as if what had been revealed for the better by the Holy Spirit were not to be followed in spiritual matters. This is plainly true, inasmuch as reason and truth must be preferred to custom."37 Gregory VII wrote to Wimund, bishop of Aversa:38 "If perhaps you adduced custom, what the Lord says should be pointed out: 'I am,' he said, 'the truth' [John
14.6]; he did not say, 'I am custom.'"39 What is more, blessed Gregory, writing about the different customs of Churches to Bishop
Augustine of the English, leaves to his foresight to choose in divine offices or in the celebration of the mass from the various uses codification of Roman law in three parts. One part is the Codex, conventionally known as Justinian's Code. The statement Abelard quotes is found in the Codex, Book
8.52(53).2 (Emperor Constantine to Proculus), in Corpus juris civilis, ed. Paul Krueger,
Theodor Mommsen, Rudolf Schöll, and Wilhelm Kroll, 3 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1963–1965), vol. 2, ed. Paul Krueger, p. 362. But Abelard's immediate source for this and the following two quotations is Ivo of Chartres, Panormia 2.163, in PL 161: 1041A–
1344D, at 1120C. Ivo's Decretum in particular was a resource with which Abelard, had he not known it already, could have become conversant during his studies with Anselm of Laon; see Mews, Abelard and Heloise, 37.
37. Augustine, De baptismo contra Donatistas libri vii 4.5.7, ed. Michael Petschenig,
CSEL 51 (1908): 143–375, at 228. This passage is substantially a quotation from Cyprian, Letter 73.13.1, in Epistulae, ed. G. F. Diercks, CCSL 3A–D (1996–1999), at 3C. This passage too is quoted by Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 4.235, in PL 161: 48–1022D, at 315AB. Last but not least, it is quoted by Abelard himself in Letter Eight, trans. Radice, p. 168.
38. St. Gregory VII was pope from 1073 to 1085, while Wimund was a supporter who later became bishop of the south Italian diocese of Aversa.
39. Epistola 69 extra registrum, in PL 148: 713CD. Although this letter has been traditionally ascribed to Gregory VII, it could also be the work of Urban II (1088–1099).
On the lineage of this observation on custom, see André Gouron, "'Non dixit: Ego sum consuetudo,'" Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung 105
(1988): 133–40.
This passage was quoted three times by Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 4.213 and 4.234, in PL 161: 311BC and 315A, and Panormia 2.166, in PL 161: 1121A. Abelard uses it in Letter Eight as well, where he quotes it from Augustine, De baptismo: it appears in Augustine's treatise at both 3.6.9 and 6.37.71, ed. Petschenig, CSEL 51: 203 and 334. In the Latin opponas does not here mean "oppose," but instead "adduce (in support of a position)."
bernard of clairvaux of others whatever he decided, and in such matters not to follow so much even the very mother Church of Rome as that which he deemed worthy to maintain:40
Your brotherhood knows (he said) the custom of the Roman Church, in which it recalls having been raised. [. . .] But I decree that you choose carefully if you have found something that can please omnipotent God more, whether in the Roman, Gallican, or some other Church, and that you instill into the Church of the English (which is still newly come to the faith) whatever you have been able to gather from many Churches by way of special usage. For you do not correct things on behalf of places but places on behalf of good things. Therefore choose from every individual Church those traits which are pious, religious, and right, and set these down, gathered as it were into a sheaf, as a custom among the minds of the English.41
But if it be permitted us in such matters to choose from among the customs of the Churches, it does not seem that our choice must be rejected. In this our choice even imitated the provident care of the Greeks, from whom we have received much learning, so that the very authority of custom should not be lacking from so self-evident a principle. Thus we see plainly that you insist upon this principle and that you are adamant about it in such fashion that you dare to hold and maintain it against the custom of all
Churches in divine offices. To be sure, you, as if newly arisen and rejoicing greatly in your newness, contrary to the custom held by all clerics as well as monks far in the past and enduring now too, established by certain new decrees that the divine office should be conducted otherwise among you. And yet you consider that you
40. St. Gregory I (the Great) was pope from 590 until his death in 604. St. Augustine was the first bishop of Canterbury and apostle of the English (died 604).
41. Gregory the Great, Registrum epistolarum 11.56a, ed. Paul Ewald and Ludwig Hartmann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae 1–2, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1887–1899), 2: 334 = 11.64 in PL 77: 1187AB. This letter, the authenticity of which has been controverted, is quoted in Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People,
1.27, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon
Press, 1969).
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are not to be faulted then, if this novelty or uniqueness of yours departs from the old habit of others, seeing that you believe it to accord very much with the principle and tenor of the Rule, and you do not care with however much astonishment others are disturbed concerning this and mutter, so long as you obey your principle (as you think it).
To call to mind a few of these matters, with all due respect to you, you have rejected the usual hymns and you have instituted certain ones unheard of among us, unknown to almost all the Churches, and less adequate.42 For this reason you content yourselves with one and the same hymn throughout even the whole year on the vigils of ferias as well as of feast days, even though in accordance with the difference of the ferias and feast days, the Church employs different hymns, just as in the case of Psalms too and other texts which are known to relate to these, as selfevident reason also demands. For this cause those who hear you always singing the same hymn (namely, "Aeterne rerum conditor") on Christmas Day, Easter, or Pentecost and other holidays are stopped in their tracks, stunned with the highest stupefaction, and they are stirred not so much to wonderment as to mockery.43
42. Although not all the hymns used traditionally in Benedictine monasteries were absent from Cistercian ones, many were indeed omitted from the practices of Cîteaux. Furthermore, the Cistercian rite included hymns taken from the Ambrosian rite (followed in Milan and a limited number of other locations), which would have been unfamiliar to many monks elsewhere.
43. The famous Regula Benedicti (Rule of Benedict, the work of Benedict of Nursia
[about 480–543]), the basis for Western monasticism, stipulates that the night office should include "an Ambrosian hymn" or "the Ambrosian hymn," which in either case could be construed (as it was often in the twelfth century) to mean a hymn by Ambrose (9.4 "Inde sequatur ambrosianum"): ed. Hanslik, CSEL 75: 54. The Rule uses the noun ambrosianum three more times: 12.4, ed. Hanslik, CSEL 75: 60; 31.11, ed.
Hanslik, 75: 62; and 17.8, ed. Hanslik, 75: 67. Later the Rule refers to the "Te Deum laudamus" (11.8), which at the time of Benedict was commonly ascribed to Ambrose, and to the "Te decet laus" (11.10). Although Benedict uses the word ambrosianum only in connection with matins, lauds, and vespers, these references sufficed to instill in the Cistercians their insistence on using throughout all the canonical hours noth-
bernard of clairvaux You have forbidden altogether to be performed by us prayers that are everywhere celebrated by the Church after supplication and the Lord's Prayer, and those which are called the litanies of the saints, as if the world had less need of your prayers or you of the litanies of the saints.44 And, what is a source of wonder, although you establish all your places of prayer in memory of the Lord's mother, you practice no commemoration of her, just as you do not do so of the other saints there.45 You have excluded from yourselves almost the whole celebration of processions.46 You do not leave off in Septuagesima the alleluia in the usual way, but you retain it into Lent.47 The creed which is called the Apostolic Creed, which has been repeated from ancient times by clerics as well as monks at prime and likewise at compline, has been removed from your custom48—you who nevertheless decided that the Athanaing but a single Ambrosian hymn, such as the "Aeterne rerum conditor." (Note that the White Monks restricted themselves to hymns supposedly composed by St. Ambrose, and preserved in the Milanese repertory, not merely to hymns conforming to the metrical scheme favored by Ambrose.) The first Cistercian hymnal contains only thirty-four hymns, sung to only nineteen melodies, all drawn from Ambrosian sources; see Waddell, "St. Bernard," 101.
44. These litanies could be called suffrages, a somewhat less-known term to designate the assemblage of antiphons, versicles, and collects to honor especially important saints.
45. All Cistercian churches were dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The commemoration of a saint usually took place on his or her memorial day, in most cases the day of martyrdom or death.
46. When Abelard wrote Letter Ten, the Cistercians restricted themselves to processions on Candlemas Day and Palm Sunday; see Waddell, "Peter Abelard's Letter
10," 81.
47. Septuagesima was the ninth Sunday before Easter and the third before Lent.
Despite the implications of its Latin name (which means "seventieth"), it fell sixty-four rather than seventy days before Easter. In any event, it signaled the start of changes in the liturgy (such as the wearing of purple vestments and the setting aside of the alleluia) that intensified in Lent and reached a peak in Holy Week. For the Cistercians to keep the alleluia in their office into Lent marked them very much apart from not merely other monks but even other churchgoing Christians.
48. The Apostolic or Apostles' Creed (Symbolum Apostolorum) was so named because it was legendarily ascribed to the twelve apostles. An encapsulation of the fun-
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sian Creed be recited only on Sundays.49 You sing the "Gloria" only with the responsories of vigils.50 You have done away altogether with ancient custom on the days of the Lord's burial; at the same time you established, against every practice of the Church and against (as people say) logic, that you say with the "Gloria" both the invitatory and hymn together with only three lessons and responsories. For since this three-day period, as the funeral rites of the Lord, is conducted in mourning and since for this reason the vigils of these days are commonly called Tenebrae [a Latin word meaning "darkness"], that this sorrow may be conveyed by the lamps which are extinguished there and then, it seems not a small cause for wonder for either the invitatory, hymn, or "Gloria"
(which are in contrast expressions of joy) to be sung then.51 damental tenets in Christian belief, it comprises a set of brief articles pertaining to God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. For further information, refer to J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3rd ed. (London: Longman, 1972), 368–434. The practice of reciting the Creed upon awakening and upon going to bed is mentioned already by Augustine, Sermon 58.11.13, in PL 38–39: 332–1638, at 38: 399.
49. The Athanasian Creed, known also from its incipit as the "Quicunque vult," is no longer ascribed to the famous archbishop of Alexandria but instead is thought to have originated in the Latin West, probably in southern Gaul. It offers a succinct exposition of the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. For further information, refer to J. N. D. Kelly, The Athanasian Creed (New York: Harper & Row: 1964).
As was mentioned in the general introduction, Abelard himself wrote expositions on both the Apostolic Creed and the Athanasian Creed.
50. The "Gloria" designates "Gloria in excelsis Deo" (Glory to God on high), the greater doxology in the mass. (A doxology is a short formula of praise to God.)
Since it begins with the words sung by the angels at Christ's birth (Luke 2.14), it is often referred to as the hymnus angelicus (angelic hymn). The Latin "Gloria," which derives from an ancient Greek hymn modeled on the Psalms, was customarily sung after the "Kyrie" on Sundays and solemnities, except during the Advent and Lent seasons.
51. During the last three days of Holy Week which are known technically as the Sacred Triduum, the Cistercians were unique in still chanting the night office with the invitatory psalm (Psalm 94, which "invited" the celebrants to sing praise to God), hymn, and a responsory with doxology, as was done in the conventional weekday form of the office; see Waddell, Hymn Collections, 1: 91, and Waddell, "St. Bernard,"
100. Tenebrae is the name for the service of matins and lauds (but to be anticipated and sung shortly after compline) during the Triduum.
bernard of clairvaux All these matters come as a source of great wonderment to everyone, which is to say, why this innovation of yours should be preferred among your people to the usage of the whole Church.
Even so, you do not on this account retreat from your practice nor do you care what others mutter, because you have confidence that you are doing it logically—you whom the establishment of a rule compels "to make a new work of an old," just as Jerome recalls about himself.52 For the Apostle [Paul] does not forbid "novelties of words" [1 Timothy 6.20], but only novelties that are "profane"
[1 Timothy 6.20] and contrary to faith. Otherwise we would not prefer the New Law to the Old and we would reject in the manner of heretics many words devised, after the canonical Scriptures, out of need for the faith. Indeed, to reject a new heresy a new word homoousion was invented, and the words Trinity and person were not included in the canonical Scriptures.53
In short, who does not know the differing and countless customs of the Church present among even clerics themselves in divine offices? Certainly not even the city of Rome itself holds to the ancient custom of the Roman see, but only the Lateran Church, which is the mother of all, holds to the ancient office, with none of her daughters following her in this, not even the very basilica of the Roman palace.54 In matters of this kind the metropolitan
Church of Milan diverges from all, in such fashion that none even 52. Jerome, "Praefatio in Evangelio," in Biblia sacra, ed. Weber and Gryson, p. 1515, line 2.
53. The term homoousion (of the same essence or substance) was used in the Nicene
Creed (325) to ward off Arianism by expressing the relations of the Father and the Son within the Trinity. It corresponds to the Latin consubstantialis. The Christian Latin neologism trinitas, translating the slightly earlier Greek trias, is attested first in Tertullian (flourished 197–220), De pudicitia 21.16 (line 77), ed. and trans. Charles Munier,
2 vols., Sources chrétiennes 394–395 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1993), 1: 274, before coming into general usage in the third century. Persona existed in Classical Latin, but not in the senses that the word acquired among Christians.
54. The Latin for the final phrase is "Romani palatii basilica," which refers to St. Peter's, the basilica that lies at the foot of the Vatican Hill. In the twelfth century the popes had a residence, known as a palatium, located adjacent to the basilica.
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of her dependent churches seeks to resemble the practice of the mother Church.55 So too Lyon, the first see of the Gauls, alone persists in its office.56
And although so great a variety has come about in these matters, no censure for innovation occurs, no matter what one Church after another has established in a new fashion, because there was nothing contrary to the faith. For this variety in the divine rite has a measure of attractiveness, because, as Cicero recalls, "in all things monotony is the mother of boredom."57 Therefore he who wished to be preached in all kinds of tongues enjoined that worship be done in different manners of offices.58 Since he also com55. For "dependent churches," Abelard uses the word suffraganeae (suffragan), which designates churches subordinate to a metropolitan or archiepiscopal see.
56. The Church of Lyon maintained its own rites throughout the Middle Ages, as Bernard himself acknowledged in a letter (Letter 174.1, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 7: 388, lines 5–8) to the canons of the city that betrays intriguing parallels to Abelard's Letter Ten:
Inter ecclesias Galliae constat profecto Lugdunensem hactenus praeeminuisse, sicut dignitate sedis, sic honestis studiis et laudabilibus institutis. . . . Praesertim in officiis ecclesiasticis haud facile umquam repentinis visa est novitatibus acquiescere, nec se aliquando iuvenili passa est decolorari levitate ecclesia plena iudicii.
Among the Churches of France, it is established that that of Lyon has until now held ascendancy, as much for the dignity of its see as for its honorable studies and praiseworthy institutions. . . . Especially in the divine offices this judicious
Church has never seemed readily to acquiesce in sudden novelties, and has never suffered to be stained by the inconstancy typical of youth.
57. Cicero, De inventione 1.41.76. Evidently Abelard much valued the saying, since he also uses it in the Prologue to the Sic et non, ed. Boyer and McKeon, p. 89, lines
14–15; in the Theologia "Summi boni" 2.77, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 140, lines
693–94; in the Theologia Christiana 3.133, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 12: 245, lines 1621–22; and in the Theologia "Scholarium" 2.90, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 452, lines 1348–
49. On Abelard's use of Cicero in general, see Gabriella d'Anna, "Abelardo e Cicerone," Studi medievali, 3rd series, 10 (1969): 333–419. In the present collection of letters
Cicero is also quoted in the Apologia against Bernard of Clairvaux and twice in Letter
Twelve (once being the Rhetoric to Herennius, which from a modern vantage point qualifies only as pseudo-Ciceronian).
58. The wording "omnium linguarum generibus" may owe to "genera linguarum" in 1 Corinthians 12.10, 12.28, and 14.10. Even without this allusion, it would be clear that the subject of this and the following sentence is Jesus Christ.
bernard of clairvaux posed the aforementioned prayer in different manners and commanded that the praying in it be done in each of two ways, how will we fulfill his command, if we presume to remove some word and if we never profess it in the manner in which he said it?
In sum, so that I may satisfy everyone, I say now even as further above, "Let every man abound in his own sense" [Romans 14.5].
Let him say it as he wishes. I prompt no one to follow me in this.
Let him change the words of Christ as he wishes. However I will retain unaltered those words, as too their meaning, insofar as I am able.