This explanation is hardly reasonable, for no prelate who was not also a temporal lord would have dared throw off his official duties without permission from his superiors.  In Abelard’s case the only superior to whom he could apply, as Abbot of Saint-Gildas in Brittany, was probably the Pope himself.  In the year 1135 the moment was exceedingly favourable for asking privileges.  Innocent, driven from Rome a second time, had summoned a council at Pisa for May 30 to help him.  Louis-le-Gros and his minister Suger gave at first no support to this council, and were overruled by Bernard of Clairvaux who in a manner drove them into giving the French clergy permission to attend.  The principal archbishops, a number of bishops, and sixteen abbots went to Pisa in May, 1135, and some one of them certainly asked Innocent for favours on behalf of Abelard, which the Pope granted.

The proof is a papal bull, dated in 1136, in favour of Heloise, giving her the rank and title of Abbess, accompanied by another giving to the Oratory of the Holy Trinity the rank and name of Monastery of the Paraclete, a novelty in Church tradition so extraordinary or so shocking that it still astounds churchmen.  With this excessive mark of favour Innocent could have felt little difficulty in giving Abelard the permission to absent himself from his abbey, and with this permission in his hands Abelard might have lectured on dialectics to John of Salisbury in the summer or autumn of 1136.  He did not, as far as known, resume lectures on theology.

Such success might have turned heads much better balanced than that of Abelard.  With the support of the Pope and at least one of the most prominent cardinals, and with relations at court with the ministers of Louis-le-Gros, Abelard seemed to himself as strong as Bernard of Clairvaux, and a more popular champion of reform.  The year 1137, which has marked a date for so many great points in our travels, marked also the moment of Abelard’s greatest vogue.  The victory of Aristotle and the pointed arch seemed assured when Suger effected the marriage of the young Prince Louis to the heiress Eleanor of Guienne.  The exact moment was stamped on the facade of his exquisite creation, the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, finished in 1140 and still in part erect.  From Saint-Denis to Saint-Sulpice was but a step.  Louis-le-Grand seems to stand close in succession to Louis-le-Gros.

Fortunately for tourists, the world, restless though it might be, could not hurry, and Abelard was to know of the pointed arch very little except its restlessness.  Just at the apex of his triumph, August 1, 1137, Louis-le-Gros died.  Six months afterwards the anti-pope also died, the schism ended, and Innocent ii needed Abelard’s help no more.  Bernard of Clairvaux became Pope and King at once.  Both Innocent and Louis-le-Jeune were in a manner his personal creations.  The King’s brother Henry, next in succession, actually became a monk at Clairvaux not long afterwards.  Even the architecture told the same story, for at Saint-Denis, though the arch might simulate a point, the old Romanesque lines still assert as firmly as ever their spiritual control.  The fleche that gave the facade a new spirit was not added until 1215, which marks Abelard’s error in terms of time.