reasoning of men, and so contradictory (_impliquées_, far fetched)
that they made little impression; and even if they served to
convince some people, it would only be during the instant that they
see the demonstration; an hour afterwards they fear to have
deceived themselves.'"

Abélard was always, as he has been called, a scholastic adventurer,
a philosophical and theological freelance, and it was after the
Calamity that he followed those courses that resulted finally in
his silencing and his obscure death. It is almost impossible for us
of modern times to understand the violence of partisanship aroused
by his actions and published words that centre apparently around
the placing of the hermitage he had made for himself under the
patronage of the third Person of the Trinity, the Paraclete, the
Spirit of love and compassion and consolation, and the consequent
arguments by which he justified himself. To us it seems that he was
only trying to exalt the power of the Holy Spirit, a pious action
at the least but to the episcopal and monastic conservators of the
faith he seems to have been guilty of trying to rationalize an
unsolvable mystery, to find an intellectual solution forbidden to
man. In some obscure way the question seems to be involved in that
other of the function of the Blessed Virgin as the fount of mercy
and compassion, and at this time when the cult of the Mother of God
had reached its highest point of potency and poignancy anything of
the sort seemed intolerable.

For a time the affairs of Abélard prospered: Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis
was his defender, and he enjoyed the favor of the Pope and the
King. He was made an abbot and his influence spread in every
direction. In 1137 the King died and conditions at Rome changed so