Peter Abélard
By Joseph McCabe
12 May, 2020
The author does not think it necessary to offer any apology for having written a life of Abélard. The intense dramatic interest of his life is known from a number of brief notices and sketches, but English readers have no complete presentation of t
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The author does not think it necessary to offer any apology for having written a life of Abélard. The intense dramatic interest of his life is known from a number of brief notices and sketches, but English readers have no complete presentation of the facts of that remarkable career in our own tongue. The History of Abailard of Mr. Berington, dating from the eighteenth century, is no longer adequate or useful. Many French and German scholars have rewritten Abélard’s life in the light of recent knowledge and feeling, but, beyond the short sketches to be found in Compayré, Poole, Rashdall, Cotter Morison, and others, no English writer of the nineteenth century has given us a complete study of this unique and much misunderstood personality. Perhaps one who has also had a monastic, scholastic, and ecclesiastical experience may approach the task with a certain confidence. Less