Peter the Venerable to Heloise, abbess for eleven years past of the
Paraclete, "the man who, by his singular authority in science, was known
to nearly all the world, and was illustrious wherever he was known,
learned, in the school of Him who said, 'Know that I am meek and lowly of
heart,' to remain meek and lowly; and, as it is but right to believe, he
has thus returned to Him."

The struggle of Abelard with the Church of Northern France and the
crusade against the Albigensians in Southern France are divided by much
more than diversity and contrast; there is an abyss between them. In
their religious condition, and in the nature as well as degree of their
civilization, the populations of the two regions were radically
different. In the north-east, between the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the
Loire, Christianity had been obliged to deal with little more than the
barbarism and ignorance of the German conquerors. In the south, on the
two banks of the Rhone and the Garonne, along the Mediterranean, and by
the Pyrenees, it had encountered all manner of institutions, traditions,
religions, and disbeliefs, Greek, Roman, African, Oriental, Pagan, and
Mussulman; the frequent invasions and long stay of the Saracens in those
countries had mingled Arab blood with the Gallic, Roman, Asiatic, and
Visigothic, and this mixture of so many different races, tongues, creeds,
and ideas had resulted in a civilization more developed, more elegant,
more humane, and more liberal, but far less coherent, simple, and strong,
morally as well as politically, than the warlike, feudal civilization of
Germanic France. In the religious order especially, the dissimilarity
was profound. In Northern France, in spite of internal disorder, and
through the influence of its bishops, missionaries, and monastic
reformers, the orthodox Church had obtained a decided superiority and
full dominion; but in Southern France, on the contrary, all the
controversies, all the sects, and all the mystical or philosophical