s
of Argenteuil. Fulbert now plotted a dastardly revenge. By his orders
Abelard was surprised in his bed, and the mutilation which, according
to Eusebius, Origen performed on himself, was violently inflicted on
the great teacher. All ecclesiastical preferment was thus rendered
canonically impossible; Abelard became the talk of Paris, and in
bitter humiliation retired to the abbey of St. Denis. Before he made
his vows, however, he required of Heloise that she should take the
veil. The heart-broken creature reproached him for his disloyalty,
and repeating the lines which Lucan puts into the mouth of Cornelia
weeping for Pompey's death, burst into tears and consented to take the
veil.

[Footnote 65: "Love is quickly caught in gentle heart."--Inf. V. 100.]

A savage punishment was inflicted by the ecclesiastical courts on
Fulbert's ruffians, who were made to suffer the _lex talionis_ and the
loss of their eyes: the canon's property was confiscated. The great
master, although forbidden to open a school at St. Denis, was
importuned by crowds of young men not to let his talents waste, and
soon a country house near by was filled with so great a company of
scholars that food could not be found for them. But enemies were
vigilant and relentless, and he had shocked the timid by doubting the
truth of the legend that Dionysius the Areopagite had come to France.

In 1124 certain of Abelard's writings on the Trinity were condemned,
and he took refuge at Nogent-sur-Seine, near Troyes, under the
patronage of the Count of Champagne. He retired to a hermitage of
thatch and reeds, the famous Paraclete, but even there students
flocked to him, and young nobles were glad to live on coarse bread and
lie on straw, that they might taste of wisdom, the bread of the
angels. Again his enemies set upon him; he surrendered the Paraclete
to Heloise and a small sisterhood, and accepted the abbotship of St.
Gildes in his own Brittany. A decade passed, and again he was seen in
Paris. His enemies now determined to silence him, and St. Bernard, the
dictator of Christendom, denounced his writings. Abelard appealed for
a hearing, and the two champions met in St. Stephen's church at Sens
before the king, the hierarchy and a brilliant and expectant audience;
the ever-victorious knight-errant of disputation, stood forth, eager
for the fray, but St. Bernard simply rose and read out seventeen
propositions from his opponent's works, which he declared to be
her