ABELARD. 



ABENCERAGES. 



18 



ABELARD, or ABAILARD, PIERRE, waa born in 1079, at Palais, 

 in Brittany. His father waa a man Of some rank and property, and 

 spared no expense in the education of Abelard. He left Palais before 

 he was twenty years of age, and went to Paris, where he became a 

 pupil of Ouillaume de Champeaux, a teacher of logic and philosophy 

 of the highest reputation in those times. At first the favourite disciple, 

 by degrees Abelard became the rival, and finally the antagonist of 

 Champeaux. To escape the persecution of his former master, Abelard, 

 at the age of 22, removed to Melun, and established himself there as 

 a teacher, with great success. Thence he removed to Corbeil, where 

 his labours seem to have injured bis health ; and he sought repose and 

 restoration by retirement to his native place, Palais, where he remained 

 a few years, and then returned to Paris ; the controversy between the 

 two antagonists was then renewed, and the contests continued till 

 Champeaux's scholars deserted him ; and he retired to a monastery. 

 Abelard having paid a visit to his mother at Palais, found on his 

 return to Paris in 1113, that Champeaux had been made bishop of 

 Chalons-sur-Marne. 



The dialectic conflicts having now ceased, Abelard commenced the 

 study of divinity, under Anselm, at I.aon. Here also the pupil became 

 the rival of his master, and Anselm at length had him expelled from 

 Laon, when he returned to Paris, and established a school of divinity, 

 which was still more numerously attended than his former schools 

 had been. Ouizot says, " In this celebrated school were trained one 

 pope (Celestine II.), nineteen cardinals, more than fifty bishops and 

 archbishops, French, English, and German ; and a much larger number 

 of those njen with whom popes, bishops, and cardinals, had often to 

 contend, guch as Arnold of Brescia, and many others. The number 

 of pupils who used at that time to assemble round Abelard has been 

 estimated at upwards of 5000." 



Abelard was about thirty-five or thirty-six years of age, when he 

 formed an acquaintance with Heloise, the niece of Fulbert, a canon in 

 the cathedral of Pans. She was probably under twenty years of age. 

 Abelard fell in love with Heloise, and got himself introduced into the 

 house of Fulbert as the tutor of his niece. The result wag a criminal 

 intercourse between the two lovers, which was at length discovered by 

 Fulbert, and Heloise was removed by Abelard to the residence of his 

 sister in Brittany, where she gave birth to a boy. 



Fulbert insisted that the wounded honour of his niece should be 

 repaired by a marriage, to which Abelard assented willingly ; but 

 Heloise with more reluctance, probably from a fear that his prospects 

 would be ruined, the highest dignities of the church in those days 

 being exclusively bestowed on unmarried ecclesiastics. The marriage 

 took place at Paris, and it was agreed to be kept secret ; but Fulbert 

 took pains to make it public, while Heloise, who resided with him, 

 denied it ; the consequence of which was that her uncle treated her 

 with great harshness, and Abelard took her away and placed her in 

 the convent of Argenteuil, near Paris. Fulbert, who seems to have 

 thought that he intended to make her a nun in order to get rid of 

 the incumbrance of a wife, vowed a cruel revenge, which he soon 

 found means to execute. The valet having been bribed, admitted 

 Fulbert and hig party into Abelard's bed-room by night, when they 

 performed a mutilation upon his person. The perpetrators fled, but 

 the valet and another were taken, and were punished by putting out 

 their eyes and the infliction of a similar mutilation. The canon 

 Fulbert was banished from Paris, and all his property was confiscated. 

 Abelard recovered from the wound ; but as the canon law rendered 

 him incapable of holding any ecclesiastical preferment, he entered 

 the abbey of St. Denis aa a monk, and Heloise became a nun in the 

 convent of Argenteuil. 



The abbot and monks of St Denis were dissolute, and Abelar.l 

 reproved them in a course of lectures which he delivered in a cell 

 detached from the abbey ; the monks got up a charge of heresy against 

 a work which he wrote on the Trinity, and by a council held in 1121 

 at Soissons, in which he was not permitted to defend himself, the book 

 was condemned and ordered to be burnt. Abelard had also denied 

 that the abbey of St. Denis was founded by Uionysius of Athens, the 

 Areopagite, as the monks asserted. This enraged the monks and 

 abbots still more, and by a series of persecutions and threats Abelard 

 was compelled to fly from St. Denis and place himself under the pro- 

 tection of the Count of Champagne. In a solitary spot of the territory 

 of Troyes he erected a small oratory of wickerwork and thatch, and 

 commenced giving lectures, to which numerous scholars crowded from 

 far and near ; the wickerwork was then changed into a building of 

 stone and timber, and Abelard named it Paraclete, or the Comforter. 

 But persecution still attending him, he left the Paraclete to become 

 superior of the monks in the abbey of St. Gildaa of Ruys, near Vannes, 

 in Britanny. 



Heloise too was not without her share of troubles. The convent 

 of Argenteuil, of which she had been made prioress, was claimed by 

 an abbot as belonging to his abbey, and Heloise and her nuns were 

 ordered to leave it. Abelard gave them the oratory of the Paraclete, 

 and there they were established, Abelard himself, after eleven years 

 of separation from Heloise, officiating in the ceremony of consecration. 



U> rnard, abbot of Clairvaux, whose monastery was not far from 

 tin- I'arnolate, having objected to some of the forms of prayer used 

 by Helr>ifle and her nuns, Abelard defended them ; and this led to a 

 controversy with the abbot, who eventually accused Abelurd of heresy. 



Bioo. DIV. vo. L 



Abelard appealed to a council, which waa held in the year 1140, in 

 the cathedral of Sens, in Champagne, where he defended himself. But 

 the influence of Bernard was more powerful than the logic of Abelard ; 

 he was condemned by the assembly ; but he appealed to the Pope, and 

 set out on his journey to Rome, which however he never reached, 

 having been induced by Peter the Venerable to remain in his monastery 

 at Cluni, near Ma9on. The Pope confirmed the sentence of the council 

 of Sens, and Abelard was ordered to be confined, all his works to be 

 burned, and he himself was prohibited from writin? anything more. 

 Peter the Venerable addressed a remonstrance to the Pope, Innocent II., 

 and the sentence was suspended. During this suspension Abelard was 

 removed to the priory of St. Marcel, near Chalons, for change of air, 

 and there he died April 21, 1142, in the sixty-third year of his age. 

 He was at first interred by the monks of Cluni in their monastery, but 

 his remains were afterwards removed to the Paraclete. 



Heloise lived twenty years afterwards as prioress of the Paraclete, 

 and when she died was buried, at her own request, in Abelard's tomb. 

 The remains of Abelard and Heloise continued undisturbed for upwards 

 of 300 years, till in 1497 they were removed to the church of the abbey, 

 and were afterwards shifted to other places. In 1800 they were re- 

 moved to the garden of the Musee Francais at Paris, and in 1817 were 

 placed in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, where they still remain 

 beneath their gothic tomb. 



Abelard was a proficient in the scholastic learning of the times, a 

 dexterous dialectician, and a subtle thinker. His theological works 

 gave an impulse to the age, and though his writings are of little value 

 now, they belong to the history of philosophy and the progress of 

 the human mind. The disputes of that age turn largely on verbal 

 trifles, but these disputes form part of the effort of philosophy to 

 emancipate itself from the fetters of religious intolerance. Though 

 Abelard possessed a large share of the learning of the times, it is 

 probable that he knew little of Greek or Hebrew, and yet Heloise, 

 according to his testimony, knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The 

 personal character of Abelard is best shown by hia letters and those 

 of Heloise. When he had once transgressed the bounds of his duty 

 by his illicit commerce with Heloise, he lost all self-control, and appears 

 a sensualist When his misfortunes drove him from the world, he 

 became cold and unfeeling towards the noble-minded woman, whose 

 passion and ardent attachment show that she was capable of the most 

 unbounded devotion to him whom she loved. The most complete 

 edition of their works is ' Petri Abelardi et Heloisse Conjugis ejua 

 Opera, nunc primum edita ex MSS. Codd. Franciaci Ambcesi,' Paris, 

 1616, 4to. M. Victor Cousin has also published ' Ouvrages luddits 

 d'Abailard,' Paris, 1836. There are several other editions, some of 

 which have portions, such as the ' Letters,' translated. 



(Biographical Dictionary, published by the Useful Knowledge 

 Society; Biographic Univertelie; Bayle, Dictionary.} 



ABEN ESRA, or with his complete name, Abraham ben Meir ben 

 Esra, a celebrated Jewish scholar, was born at Toledo, probably in 

 1119, and died about 1194, at the age of seventy-five yenrs. A con- 

 siderable portion of his life was spent in travelling. He visited Mantua 

 in 1145, and the island of Rhodes in 1156; in 1159 he was in England, 

 and in 1167 at Rome. His celebrity among his contemporaries, as a 

 scholar and as an accomplished writer of the Hebrew language, was 

 very great. Among ourselves Abeu Esra has become known chiefly 

 through his great commentary on the Old Testament, which it seems 

 he wrote at different periods, between the years 1140 and 1167. It 

 has been printed in the great Rabbinical editions of the Bible, which 

 have appeared at Venice, Bale, and Amsterdam ; and there have been 

 besides many separate editions of single parts of it. Abeu Esra wroto 

 also on mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, medicine, philology, and 

 astrology. His treatise in verse on the game of chess, translated by 

 Thomas Hyde (Oxford, 1667, 1694), affords us a specimen of his skill 

 in poetic composition. For an enumeration of the works of Abeu 

 E.'ra, which are still preserved in manuscript in several of the libraries 

 of Europe, see the article ABEN ESBA, by Hartmaun, in Ersch uud 

 Gruber's ' Encyclopaedia." 



ABHNCERAGES (Beni Serraj), is the name given by Spanish 

 chroniclers and romance writers to a noble family in the Arabic king- 

 dom of Grenada, several members of which distinguished themselves 

 during the period immediately preceding the fall of the Mohammedan 

 empire in Spain. The history of the Abencerages is intimately con- 

 nected with that of the then reigning dynasty of Grenada. In the 

 year 1423 of our era, died Yussuf III., a wise and valiant prince. He 

 was succeeded by his son Mohammed VII., surnamed Al-Haizari, or 

 the Left-Handed, who followed the example and advice of his father 

 in maintaining friendly relations with the Christian court of Castille, 

 and with the Arab princes on the northern coast of Africa, but lost 

 the affection of his subjects by his pride and tyranny. The discon- 

 tent which soon manifested itself against the youthful monarch, was 

 for a time kept in check by the watchfulness of his principal chamber- 

 lain, Yussuf-ben-Zerragh, then the chief of the noble family which 

 probably derived from him the common designation of the Abencer- 

 ages. But, in 1427, an open revolt broke out, which had been incited 

 by one of the king's cousins, Mohammed-al-Zaghir. The royal palace, 

 called the Alhambra, was invested by the conspirators. Moham- 

 med VII., disguised as a fisherman, escaped to Africa, where the King 

 of Fez, Mulei-ben-Fariz, kindly received him, while Mohammed-al- 







