[1140-1142 A.D.] taking refuge in the monastery of Cluny. The abbot, Peter the Venerable, answered for Abelard, who died there two years afterwards. Such was the end of the restorer of philosophy in the Middle Ages- the son of Pelagius, the father of Descartes, and a Breton like them. From another point of view, he may be regarded as a precursor of the humane and sentimental school, which was revived in the persons of Fénélon and Rousseau.

There is no memory more popular in France than that of Abelard's mistress. The fall of the man made the grandeur of the woman; but for Abelard's misfortune, Héloïse would have been unknown; she would have remained obscure and in the shade, she would have desired no other glory than that of her spouse. At the period of their separation, he made her take the veil, and built for her the Paraclet, of which she became the abbess. There she held a great school of theology, Greek, and Hebrew. Many similar monasteries rose around the Paraclet, and some years after the death of Abelard, Héloïse was declared head of an order by the pope. But her glory consists in her love, so constant and so disinterested a love to which Abelard's coldness and hardness of heart give a new lustre. Let us compare the language of the two lovers :

"Fulbert," says Abelard, "gave her up, without reserve, to my control, so that, upon my return from the schools, I should apply myself to her instruction, and, if I found her negligent, should chastise her severely. Was not this giving full license to my desires, so that, if I did not succeed by caresses, I might compass my end by threats and blows?"

This dastardly brutality of a pedant of the twelfth century is in strange contrast with the exalted and disinterested sentiments expressed by Héloïse. "God knows, in thee, I sought but thee; nothing of thee but thyself; such was the sole object of my desire. I was ambitious of no advantage, not even of the bond of wedlock; I thought not, thou well knowest, of satisfying either my own wishes or my own pleasure, but thine. If the name of spouse

is more holy, sweeter to me seemed that of thy mistress, that (be not angry) of thy concubine (concubinæ vel seorti). The more I humbled myself for thee, the more I hoped to gain in thy heart. Yes, though the master of the world, though the emperor had been willing to honour me with the name of his spouse, I would rather have been called thy mistress than his wife and his empress (tua dici meretrix, quàm illius imperatrix)." She accounts in a singular manner for her having long refused to be the wife of Abelard: "Would it not have been an unseemly, a deplorable thing, that one woman should appropriate and take for herself alone, him whom nature had created for all mankind? What mind, intent upon the meditations of philosophy or of sacred things, could endure the crying of children, the prating of nurses, the disturbance and tumult of serving-men and women?"

The mere form of the letters that passed between Abelard and Héloïse shows how little the passion of the latter was returned. Abelard divides and subdivides his mistress's letters; he replies to them methodically, and by chapters. He heads his own: "To the spouse of Christ, the slave of Christ"; or "To his dear sister in Christ, Abelard her brother in Christ." Héloïse's tone is very different: "To her master, nay, father; to her husband, nay, brother; his handmaid, his spouse, nay, his daughter, his sister; Héloïse to Abelard.”ƒ

Abelard and the University

Hastings Rashdall describes the relations between Abelard's influence in Paris and the ultimate development of the University of Paris as follows:

[1100-1150 A.D.]

"The less imaginative historians of the University of Paris have generally been contented with tracing its origin to the teaching of Abelard. And it was undoubtedly to the intellectual movement of which Abelard is the most conspicuous representative that the rise of the university must ultimately be ascribed. But there was nothing in the organisation of the schools wherein Abelard taught to distinguish them from any other cathedral schools which might for a time be rendered famous by the teaching of some illustrious master. In the age of Abelard there were three great churches at Paris more or less famous for their schools. In the first place there was the cathedral (Notre Dame), whose schools were presided over by William of Champeaux. Then, on the left bank of the Seine, there was the collegiate church of St. Geneviève; and there was the church of the Canons Regular of St. Victor's, where a school for external scholars was started by William after his retirement from the world. St. Victor's became the head-quarters of the old traditional or positive theology, and it had ceased to exist, or ceased to attract secular students, before the first traces of a university organisation begin to appear. With both the secular schools of Paris, Abelard was at one time or other connected. Denifle's repudiation of the old view that the university arose from a junction between the arts schools of St. Geneviève and the theological schools of Notre Dame goes slightly beyond the evidence, but in the main he is unquestionably right in contending that it was the cathedral schools which eventually developed into the university.

"It was the fame of Abelard which first drew to the streets of Paris the hordes of students whose presence involved that multiplication of masters by whom the university was ultimately formed. In that sense, and in that sense only the origin of the University of Paris may be connected with the name and age of Abelard. Of a university or a recognised society of masters we hear nothing; nay, the existence of such an institution was impossible at a time when the single master of the cloister school seems to have been as a rule the only recognised master in or around each particular church.” m

The Position of Woman

Abelard had propounded the ideal of pure and disinterested love in his writings, as the consummation of the religious soul. Woman rose up to it,

for the first time, in the writings of Héloïse; but still indeed referring it to man, to her spouse, to her visible God.

The restoration of woman, which had begun with Christianity, took place chiefly in the twelfth century. A slave in the East, even in the Greek gynæceum a recluse, emancipated by imperial jurisprudence, she was recognised by the new religion as man's equal. Still Christianity, but just liberated from pagan sensuality, continued to fear and distrust woman; men knew themselves to be weak and fond, and they repudiated her all the more strongly, the more they felt how they sympathised with her in their hearts. Hence, the harsh, and even contemptuous expressions with which they labour to fortify themselves. Woman is usually designated by the ecclesiastical writers, and in the Capitularies, by that degrading, but most expressive phrase, "the weaker vessel" (vas infirmius). When Gregory VII wished to free the clergy from its double bond, woman and land, there was a new outburst of invective against that dangerous Eve whose seduction wrought Adam's ruin, and who evermore pursues him in his sons.

A quite opposite movement began in the twelfth century. Free mysticism undertook to raise up what sacerdotal harshness had trampled under

[1100-1150 A.D.] foot. It was especially a Breton, Robert d'Arbrissel, who fulfilled this mission of love. He re-opened the bosom of Christ to women, founded asylums for them, built them Fontevrault, and there were soon Fontevraults all over Christendom. The enterprising charity of Robert applied itself, by preference, to great sinners of the female sex. He taught the clemency of God, and his immeasurable mercy in the vilest haunts. It was a curious thing to see the blessed Robert d'Arbrissel holding forth day and night amidst a crowd of disciples of both sexes, all resting together around him. The bitter sarcasms of his enemies had no effect upon the charitable and courageous Breton, nor even the scandals to which these meetings gave occasion; he covered all with the wide mantle of grace.

As grace prevailed over the law, a great religious revolution took place. Piety became converted into an enthusiasm of chivalric gallantry; the mystical church of Lyons celebrated a festival of the Immaculate Conception (1134), thus exalting the ideal of maternal purity precisely at the period when Héloïse was expressing the pure disinterestedness of love in her famous .letters. Woman reigned in heaven; she reigned also upon earth. We see her interfere, and with authority, in the affairs of this world. Bertrade de Montfort ruled at once over her first husband, Fulk of Anjou, and her second, Philip I, king of France. Louis VII dates his acts from the coronation of his wife Adela. Women, natural judges in poetical contests, and in the courts of love, sat also as judges in grave matters, and upon an equality with their husbands. The king of France expressly recognises this right.

In the first half of the twelfth century women were everywhere restored to that right of inheritance from which they had been excluded by feudal barbarism in England, Castile, Aragon, Jerusalem, Burgundy, Flanders, Hainault, Vermandois, Aquitaine, Provence, and Lower Languedoc. The rapid extinction of male heirs, the softening of manners, and the progress of equity, restored the right of inheritance to women. They brought sovereignties with them into foreign houses; they linked and bound the world together, accelerated the agglomeration of states, and prepared the way for the centralisation of the great monarchies.

One royal house alone, that of the Capets, did not recognise the right of women; it remained safe from the mutations which transferred the other states from one dynasty to another; it received and it did not give. Foreign queens might come; the female, the movable element, might be renewed, but the male element did not come to it from without, it remained always the same, and with it remained an identity of spirit and a perpetuity of system. This fixity of the dynasty is one of those things which have most contributed to insure the unity and the personality of this mobile country. The common characteristic of the period following the crusade, is an attempt at emancipation. The crusade in its immense movement had been an occasion-an impulse; when the occasion came, the attempt took place, an attempt for the emancipation of the people in the communes, for the emancipation of women, for that of philosophy and of pure thought. This echo of the crusade, like the crusade itself, was to display all its potency and its effect in France, among the most sociable of nations. f

Almost at the moment that the Crusades broke out, an institution commenced its aggrandisement which has, perhaps, contributed more than any other to the formation of modern society, and to the fusion of all the social elements into two powers, the government and the people, -the institution of Royalty.-GUIZOT.m

PHILIP AUGUSTUS, Louis' son and successor, who was about fifteen years of age when he began to reign, was already the nursling of court adulation and homage. His predecessors had not attained dignity sufficient to expose them to this bane of the royal nature. Congratulations, couched in the language of oriental hyperbole, had greeted his birth. He was styled the Dieudonné, "the God-given"; and self-constituted laureates began already to celebrate the majesty of the monarch of the French. Formerly, the surrounding nobles had disdained to dispute court favour or influence; but the first years of Philip's reign were taken up with the rivalry of the houses of Flanders and Champagne, which each sought to be the masters and ministers of the young sovereign. Henry II of England gave his support to the counts of Champagne, and the partisans of Flanders were obliged to retire from Paris. They formed a league, and menaced war; but Philip, with the English monarch's aid, easily overcame the malcontents. Henry showed generosity on this occasion. Instead of profiting by the divisions of the French, and keeping them alive, he frankly supported the young king against his refractory barons. He was king himself, and sympathised with royalty. Philip ill repaid this kindness: he imitated his father's policy in seducing the sons of the English monarch from their allegiance; and their frequent ingratitude at length broke the heart of the sensitive and passionate monarch. Richard, duke of Aquitaine, known as Cœur de Lion, and his father's successor on the throne, was the especial friend and ally of Philip in these quarrels; and for a long time the princes shared the same tent and the same bed.

Meantime a third crusade began to be preached. This prevalent enthusiasm, like the rebellions of an oppressed yet brave people, was sure to arouse itself and reawaken as soon as time had elapsed sufficient to allow

[1190-1194 A.D.] the disasters of the past to be forgotten. Saladin had recently taken Jerusalem. Fugitives instantly filled Europe with the dismal tidings. The cry for a crusade became general: it was no longer, however, the church that called a council to debate and decide upon the question; another power had arisen to rob the clergy of their initiative. The king called a parliament (parlement) of his barons at Gisors, and there a third crusade was determined upon. Cœur de Lion was the first to assume the cross; and king Philip, only hurt at being anticipated, followed his example. Frederick Barbarossa also took the same resolution.

In June of the year 1190, Philip Augustus received the pilgrim's scrip and staff from the hands of the abbot of St. Denis. Richard received his at Tours; and it was remarked, as an omen, that, as he leaned on the staff, it broke under his weight. In order to avoid the disasters of former crusades, they were to proceed to Palestine by sea. The two kings wintered in Sicily on their voyage thither, and there laid the foundation of their future jealousy and hate. The crusaders found the barons of Syria engaged in the siege of Acre. Their arrival hastened its surrender, and at the same time marked it with crime. Richard caused upwards of two thousand captives to be massacred in cold blood, and Philip was guilty of a similar piece of cruelty. The monarchs, indeed, had some slight breach of stipulations to allege, or might excuse their conduct as a reprisal for that of Saladin, who put to death many of the prisoners whom he made at the battle of Tiberias, more especially all those whose tonsure marked them to belong to the order of the Templars. It was thus that the ferocity of oriental manners came to alloy the more generous spirit of chivalry. In Palestine the French learned to be merciless towards their religious enemies, and hence it was that the fair page of their history was soon afterwards stained by the massacre of those whom they called heretics at home.

PHILIP AUGUSTUS

Philip Augustus could not long endure the superior renown and prowess of Cœur de Lion. He seized the pretext of an illness to quit Palestine and abandon the field of glory to his rival. Returning home, he besought the pope to release him from the oath which bound him to respect the rights and territories of a brother crusader. The pontiff refused; but Philip felt himself sufficiently absolved by the Macchiavellian law of monarchical policy and fortune, in making Richard fall captive to the duke of Austria, on his return from the Holy Land, seemed to favour the envious designs of the French monarch. Philip no sooner was informed of Richard's captivity,