This renewed success, in the midst of disgrace, created immeasurable envy.  Moreover, the sarcasms, boldness, and new views of the philosopher raised a storm of hatred.  Galileo was not more offensive to the pedants and priests of his generation than Abelard was to the Schoolmen and monks of his day.  They impeached both his piety and theology.  He was stigmatized as unsound and superficial.  Yet he continued his attacks, his ridicule, and his sarcasms.  In proportion to the animosities of his foes was the zeal of his followers, who admired his boldness and arrogance.  At last a great clamor was raised against the daring theologian.  Saint Bernard, the most influential and profound ecclesiastic of the day, headed the opposition.  He maintained that the foundations of Christianity were assailed.  Even Abelard could not stand before the indignation and hostility of such a saint,—­a man who kindled crusades, who made popes, who controlled the opinions of the age.  Abelard was obliged to fly, and sought an asylum amid the rocks and sands of Brittany.  The Duke of this wild province gave him the abbey of St. Gildas; but its inmates were ignorant and disorderly, and added insubordination to dissoluteness.  They ornamented their convent with the trophies of the chase.  They thought more of bears and wild boars and stags than they did of hymns and meditations.  The new abbot, now a grave and religious man, in spite of his opposition to the leaders of the orthodox party, endeavored to reform the monks,—­a hopeless task,—­and they turned against him with more ferocity than the theologians.  They even poisoned, it is said, the sacramental wine.  He was obliged to hide among the rocks to save his life.  Nothing but aid from the neighboring barons saved him from assassination.

Thus fifteen years were passed in alternate study, glory, suffering, and shame.  In his misery Abelard called on God for help,—­his first great advance in that piety which detractors depreciated.  He wrote also to a friend a history of his misfortunes.  By accident this history fell into the hands of Heloise, then abbess of the Paraclete, which Abelard had given her, and where she was greatly revered for all those virtues most esteemed in her age.  It opened her wound afresh, and she wrote a letter to her husband such as has seldom been equalled for pathos and depth of sentiment.  It is an immortal record of her grief, her unsubdued passion, her boundless love, not without gentle reproaches for what seemed a cold neglect and silence for fifteen long and bitter years, yet breathing forgiveness, admiration, affection.  The salutation of that letter is remarkable:  “Heloise to her lord, to her father, to her husband, to her brother:  his servant,—­yes, his daughter; his wife,—­yes, his sister.”  Thus does she begin that tender and long letter, in which she describes her sufferings, her unchanged affections, her ardent wishes for his welfare, revealing in every line not merely genius and sensibility, but a lofty and magnanimous soul.  She glories in what constitutes the real superiority of her old lover; she describes with simplicity what had originally charmed her,—­his songs and conversation.  She professes still an unbounded obedience to his will, and begs for a reply, if for nothing else that she may be stimulated to a higher life amid the asperities of her gloomy convent.