Church owed much of that regeneration of the spirit which gave it
such vitality throughout the twelfth century. Hildebrand died,
indeed, when Abélard was only six years old, but he left the Church
such a force in the affairs of men as it had never been before. As
for Louis the Fat, who reigned from 1108 to 1137, it was he who
began to lift the royal power in France out of the shadow which the
slothfulness and incompetence of his immediate predecessors, Henry
I and Philip I, had cast over it. Discerning enough to see that the
chief enemies of the crown were the great nobles, and constantly
advised by a minister of exceptional wisdom, Suger, abbot of St.
Denis, Louis did his utmost to protect the towns and the churches,
and to bring that small part of France wherein his power was felt
out of the anarchy and chaos of the eleventh century.

It was the France of Louis VI and Sager which formed the background
for the great battle between the realists and the nominalists, the
battle in which Abélard played no small part. His life was divided
between the towns wherein he taught and the Church which
alternately welcomed and denounced him. His fellow-disputants have
their places in the history of philosophy; the story of Abélard's
love for Héloïse has set him apart, so that he has lived for eight
centuries less as a fearless thinker and masterly logician than as
one of the glowingly romantic figures of the Middle Ages.


"A FRIEND"

It is not known to whom Abélard's letter was addressed, but it may
be guessed that the writer intended it to reach the hands of
Héloïse. This actually happened, and the first and most famous