Once arrived at power, Bernard made short work of all that tried to resist him.  During 1139 he seems to have been too busy or too ill to take up the affair of Abelard, but in March, 1140, the attack was opened in a formal letter from William of Saint-Thierry, who was Bernard’s closest friend, bringing charges against Abelard before Bernard and the Bishop of Chartres.  The charges were simple enough:—­

Pierre Abelard seized the moment, when all the masters of ecclesiastical doctrine have disappeared from the scene of the world, to conquer a place apart, for himself, in the schools, and to create there an exclusive domination.  He treats Holy Scripture as though it were dialectics.  It is a matter with him of personal invention and annual novelties.  He is the censor and not the disciple of the faith; the corrector and not the imitator of the authorized masters.

In substance, this is all.  The need of action was even simpler.  Abelard’s novelties were becoming a danger; they affected not only the schools, but also even the Curia at Rome.  Bernard must act because there was no one else to act:  “This man fears you; he dreads you! if you shut your eyes, whom will he fear? ...  The evil has become too public to allow a correction limited to amicable discipline and secret warning.”  In fact, Abelard’s works were flying about Europe in every direction, and every year produced a novelty.  One can still read them in M. Cousin’s collected edition; among others, a volume on ethics:  “Ethica, seu Scito teipsum”; on theology in general, an epitome; a “Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum et Christianum”; and, what was perhaps the most alarming of all, an abstract of quotations from standard authorities, on the principle of the parallel column, showing the fatal contradictions of the authorized masters, and entitled “Sic et Non”!  Not one of these works but dealt with sacred matters in a spirit implying that the Essence of God was better understood by Pierre du Pallet than by the whole array of bishops and prelates in Europe!  Had Bernard been fortunate enough to light upon the “Story of Calamity,” which must also have been in existence, he would have found there Abelard’s own childlike avowal that he taught theology because his scholars “said that they did not want mere words; that one can believe only what one understands; and that it is ridiculous to preach to others what one understands no better than they do.”  Bernard himself never charged Abelard with any presumption equal to this.  Bernard said only that “he sees nothing as an enigma, nothing as in a mirror, but looks on everything face to face.”  If this had been all, even Bernard could scarcely have complained.  For several thousand years mankind has stared Infinity in the face without pretending to be the wiser; the pretension of Abelard was that, by his dialectic method, he could explain the Infinite, while all other theologists talked mere words; and by way of proving that he had got to the