Sens; and Abélard, feeling certain that his writings contained nothing
which he could not show to be strictly orthodox, demanded that he should
be allowed to explain and dialectically defend his position, in open
dispute, before it. But this was above all things what his enemies
dreaded. They felt that nothing was safe before his brilliant dialectic.
Bernard even refused to enter the lists with him; and preferred to draw
up a list of his heresies, in the form of sentences sundered from their
context in his works,--some of them, indeed, from works which he never
wrote,--and to call upon the council to condemn them. (These theses may
be found in Denzinger's 'Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum,' pp.
109 _seq._) Abélard, clearly understanding the scheme, feeling its
unfairness, and knowing the effect of Bernard's lachrymose pulpit
rhetoric upon sympathetic ecclesiastics who believed in his power to
work miracles, appeared before the council, only to appeal from its
authority to Rome. The council, though somewhat disconcerted by this,
proceeded to condemn the disputed theses, and sent a notice of its
action to the Pope. Fearing that Abélard, who had friends in Rome, might
proceed thither and obtain a reversal of the verdict, Bernard set every
agency at work to obtain a confirmation of it before his victim could
reach the Eternal City. And he succeeded.

The result was for a time kept secret from Abélard, who, now over sixty
years old, set out on his painful journey. Stopping on his way at the
famous, hospitable Abbey of Cluny, he was most kindly entertained by its
noble abbot, who well deserved the name of Peter the Venerable. Here,
apparently, he learned that he had been condemned and excommunicated;
for he went no further. Peter offered the weary man an asylum in his
house, which was gladly accepted; and Abélard, at last convinced of the
vanity of all worldly ambition, settled down to a life of humiliation,
meditation, study, and prayer. Soon afterward Bernard made advances