his career with considerable accuracy. The story told in the
"Historia Calamitatum" covers the events of his life from boyhood
to about 1132 or 1133,--in other words, up to approximately his
fifty-third or fifty-fourth year. That the account he gives of
himself is substantially correct cannot be doubted; making all due
allowance for the violence of his feelings, which certainly led him
to colour many incidents in a manner unfavourable to his enemies,
the main facts tally closely with all the external evidence now
available.

A very brief summary of the events of the final years of his life
will serve to round out the story. The "Historia Calamitatum" was
written while Abélard was still abbot of the monastery of St.
Gildas, in Brittany. The terrors of his existence there are fully
dwelt on in his autobiographical letter, and finally, in 1134 or
1135, he fled, living for a short time in retirement. In 1136,
however, we find him once more lecturing, and apparently with much
of his former success, on Mont Ste. Genevieve. His old enemies were
still on his trail, and most of all Bernard of Clairvaux, to whose
fiery adherence to the faith Abélard's rationalism seemed a sheer
desecration. The unceasing activities of Bernard and others finally
brought Abélard before an ecclesiastical council at Sens in 1140,
where he was formally arraigned on charges of heresy. Had Abélard's
courage held good, he might have won his case, for Bernard was
frankly terrified at the prospect of meeting so formidable a
dialectitian, but Abélard, broken in spirit by the prolonged
persecution from which he had suffered, contented himself with
appealing to the Pope. The indefatigable Bernard at once proceeded
to secure a condemnation of Abélard from Rome, whither the accused
man set out to plead his case. On the way, however, he collapsed,