The supremacy assigned by him to the subjective element of conscience appears in such phrases as, there is no sin except against conscience; also in the opinion he pronounces, that, though in the case of a mistaken moral conviction, an action is not to be called good, yet it is not so bad as an action objectively right but done against conscience.  Thus, without allowing that conscientious persecutors of Christians act rightly, he is not afraid, in the application of his principle, to say that they would act still more wrongly if through not listening to their conscience, they spared their victims.  But this means only that by following conscience we avoid sinning; for virtue in the full sense, it is necessary that the conscience should have judged rightly.  By what standard, however, this is to be ascertained, he nowhere clearly says. Contemptus Dei, given by him as the real and only thing that constitutes an action bad, is merely another subjective description.

ST. BERNARD of Clairvaux (1091-1153), the strenuous opponent of Abaelard, and the great upholder of mysticism against rationalism in the early scholastic period when the two were not yet reconciled, gave utterance, in the course of his mystical effusions, to some special views of love and disinterestedness.

There are two degrees of Christian virtue, Humility and Charity or Love.  When men look into themselves, and behold the meanness that is found there, the fitting state of mind is, first, humility; but soon the sense of their very weakness begets in them charity and compassion towards others, while the sense also of a certain human dignity raises within them feelings of love towards the author of their being.  The treatise De Amore Dei sets forth the nature of this love, which is the highest exercise of human powers.  Its fundamental characteristic is its disinterestedness.  It has its reward, but from meriting, not from seeking.  It is purely voluntary, and, as a free sentiment, necessarily unbought; it has God for its single object, and would not be love to God, if he were loved for the sake of something else.

He distinguishes various degrees of love.  There is, first, a natural love of self for the sake of self.  Next, a motion of love towards God amid earthly misfortunes, which also is not disinterested.  The third degree is different, being love to God for his own sake, and to our neighbour for God’s sake.  But the highest grade of all is not reached, until men come to love even themselves only by relation to God; at this point, with the disappearance of all special and interested affection, the mystic goal is attained.

JOHN of SALISBURY (d. 1180) is the last name to be cited in the early scholastic period.  He professed to be a practical philosopher, to be more concerned about the uses of knowledge than about knowledge itself, and to subordinate everything to some purpose; by way of protest against the theoretic hair-splitting and verbal subtleties of his predecessors.  Even more than in Ethics, he found in Politics his proper sphere.  He was the staunchest upholder of the Papal Supremacy, which, after long struggles, was about to be established at its greatest height, before presiding at the opening of the most brilliant period of scholasticism.