Council of Soissons was held while the architects and sculptors were building the west porch of Chartres and the Aquilon at Mont-Saint-Michel.  Averroes was born at Cordova in 1126; Omar Khayyam died at Naishapur in 1123.  Poetry and metaphysics owned the world, and their quarrel with theology was a private, family dispute.  Very soon the tide turned decisively in Abelard’s favour.  Suger, a political prelate, became minister of the King, and in March, 1122, Abbot of Saint-Denis.  In both capacities he took the part of Abelard, released him from restraint, and even restored to him liberty of instruction, at least beyond the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris.  Abelard then took a line of conduct singularly parallel with that of Bernard.  Quitting civilized life he turned wholly to religion.  “When the agreement,” he said, “had been executed by both parties to it, in presence of the King and his ministers, I next retired within the territory of Troyes, upon a desert spot which I knew, and on a piece of ground given me by certain persons, I built, with the consent of the bishop of the diocese, a sort of oratory of reeds and thatch, which I placed under the invocation of the Holy Trinity ...  Founded at first in the name of the Holy Trinity, then placed under its invocation, it was called ‘Paraclete’ in memory of my having come there as a fugitive and in my despair having found some repose in the consolations of divine grace.  This denomination was received by many with great astonishment, and some attacked it with violence under pretext that it was not permitted to consecrate a church specially to the Holy Ghost any more than to God the Father, but that, according to ancient usage, it must be dedicated either to the Son alone or to the Trinity.”

The spot is still called Paraclete, near Nogent-sur-Seine, in the parish of Quincey about halfway between Fontainebleau and Troyes.  The name Paraclete as applied to the Holy Ghost meant the Consoler, the Comforter, the Spirit of Love and Grace; as applied to the oratory by Abelard it meant a renewal of his challenge to theologists, a separation of the Persons in the Trinity, a vulgarization of the mystery; and, as his story frankly says, it was so received by many.  The spot was not so remote but that his scholars could follow him, and he invited them to do so.  They came in great numbers, and he lectured to them.  “In body I was hidden in this spot; but my renown overran the whole world and filled it with my word.”  Undoubtedly Abelard taught theology, and, in defiance of the council that had condemned him, attempted to define the persons of the Trinity.  For this purpose he had fallen on a spot only fifty or sixty miles from Clairvaux where Bernard was inspiring a contrary spirit of religion; he placed himself on the direct line between Clairvaux and its source at Citeaux near Dijon; indeed, if he had sought for a spot as central as possible to the active movement of the Church and the time, he could have hit on none more convenient