enemies admitted, a brilliant teacher and an unconquerable
logician; he was, moreover, a voluminous writer. Works by him which
have been preserved include letters, sermons, philosophical and
religious treatises, commentaries on the Bible, on Aristotle and on
various other books, and a number of poems.

Many of the misfortunes which the "Historia Calamitatum" relates
were the direct outcome of Abelard's uncompromising position as a
rationalist, and the document is above all interesting for the
picture it gives of the man himself, against the background of
early twelfth century France. A few dates will help the general
reader to connect the life surrounding Abelard with other and more
familiar facts. William the Conqueror had entered England thirteen
years before Abelard's birth. The boy was eight years old when the
Conqueror died near Rouen during his struggle with Philip of
France. He was seventeen when the First Crusade began, and twenty
when the crusaders captured Jerusalem.

Two of the men who most profoundly influenced the times in which
Abelard lived were Hildebrand, famous as Pope Gregory VII, and
Louis VI (the Fat), king of France. It was to Hildebrand that the
Church owed much of that regeneration of the spirit which gave it
such vitality throughout the twelfth century. Hildebrand died,
indeed, when Abelard 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 Abelard 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 Abelard's
love for Heloise has set him ap