They are large assumptions, for this is not a period in world
history when the informing energy of life expresses itself through
such qualities, whereas the twelfth century was of precisely this
nature. The antecedent hundred years had seen the recovery from the
barbarism that engulfed Western Europe after the fall of Rome, and
the generation of those vital forces that for two centuries were to
infuse society with a vigour almost unexampled in its potency and
in the things it brought to pass. The parabolic curve that
describes the trajectory of Mediaevalism was then emergent out of
"chaos and old night" and Abélard and his opponent, St. Bernard,
rode high on the mounting force in its swift and almost violent
ascent.

Pierre du Pallet, yclept Abélard, was born in 1079 and died in
1142, and his life precisely covers the period of the birth,
development and perfecting of that Gothic style of architecture
which is one of the great exemplars of the period. Actually, the
Norman development occupied the years from 1050 to 1125 while the
initiating and determining of Gothic consumed only fifteen years,
from Bury, begun in 1125, to Saint-Denis, the work of Abbot Suger,
the friend and partisan of Abélard, in 1140. It was the time of the
Crusades, of the founding and development of schools and
universities, of the invention or recovery of great arts, of the
growth of music, poetry and romance. It was the age of great kings
and knights and leaders of all kinds, but above all it was the
epoch of a new philosophy, refounded on the newly revealed corner
stones of Plato and Aristotle, but with a new content, a new
impulse and a new method inspired by Christianity.