To his most beloved Ivo, by the grace of God cardinal priest of the holy Roman Church, Bernard, styled abbot of Clairvaux, ‘to love justice and hate iniquity’.

Master Peter Abelard, monk without a rule, prelate without responsibility, neither holds an order nor is held by an order. He is a man unlike himself: a Herod within, a John without; double through and through, having nothing of a monk about him except the name and the habit. But what is that to me? ‘Everyone shall bear his own burden.’ It is something else that I cannot hide, something that concerns all who love the name of Christ. ‘He speaks iniquity on high’, he corrupts the purity of the faith and the chastity of the Church. ‘He is passing beyond the bounds which our fathers have set.’ Disputing and writing of the faith, of the sacraments, of the holy Trinity, he changes, increases and diminishes individual details to suit his own pleasure. In his books and works he shows himself to be a fabricator of falsehood and a cultivator of perverse doctrines, proving himself a heretic not so much in error as in obstinate defence of error. He is a man going beyond his own measure, in wisdom of speech making void the virtue of the cross of Christ. He knows everything that is in heaven and earth, except himself. He was condemned at Soissons, together with his work, in the presence of a legate of the Church of Rome. But as if that condemnation was not enough for him, he is doing for a second time something to merit a second condemnation; and now ‘the last error is worse than the first’. He has no worries, all the same, for he boasts of having cardinals and clerks of the curia as his old pupils, and he takes on to defend his past and present error those at whose hands he ought to fear judgement and condemnation. If anyone has the spirit of God, let him remember the verse: ‘Have I not hated them, O Lord, that hated thee: and pined away because of thy enemies?’ May God through you and the rest of his sons deliver His Church ‘from wicked lips and a deceitful tongue’.

To the revered lord and dearest father, Master Guido, by grace of God cardinal priest of the holy Roman Church, Bernard, styled abbot of Clairvaux, not to turn aside to the right hand nor to the left.

I do you wrong if I were to suppose that you love someone in such a way that you love his errors equally with him. For anyone who loves someone like that does not yet know how one should love him. Affection like that is ‘earthly, sensual, devilish’, harmful to lover and loved alike. Others may make judgements about others as they will: I can still not make a judgement about you that is not close neighbour to reason, that does not toe the line of equity. Some judge first and look for proof later: I shall not judge if a drink is sweet or bitter before I taste it. Master Peter introduces ‘profane novelties of words’ and meaning in his books; he disputes about the faith against the faith, he assails the law with the words of the law. He sees nothing through a glass or in a dark manner, but gazes on everything face to face, ‘walking in great’ and ‘wonderful matters above him’. It would be better for him if, in accordance with the title of his own book, he got to know himself, and did not go beyond his measure ‘but was wise unto sobriety’. I do not accuse him to the Father: he has his own book to accuse him, in which he was ill pleased. When he speaks of the Trinity, he savours of Arius; when of grace, he savours of Pelagius; when of the person of Christ, he savours of Nestorius. I do not presume on your fair-mindedness if I have asked you for a long time not to prefer anyone to Christ in the cause of Christ. But know this, that it is expedient for you, to whom ‘power is given by the Lord’, it is expedient to the Church of Christ, it is expedient to that man himself, that silence be imposed on him ‘whose mouth is full of cursing and of bitterness and of deceit’.

To his father and lord William bishop of Mende, full of days, Berengar, [wishing that] ‘his youth be renewed like the eagle’s’.

1. In a foreign place my body is absolutely safe from robbers, but my spirit is in danger here with you in a holy place. Wherefore in the sight of the whole world I proffer you the staff of my defence, so that the teeth of the holy may not venture to bite one whom the ferocity of swords allows to enjoy the breath of life. Be then the Ulysses of my cause, so that Circe, though daughter of the sun, may not dare to change my body with muttered magic, so that envy may not be able to blacken the star of my conscience. 2. I should truly be less aggrieved if the jaws of a wolf were drinking my blood than if I were being chopped up in pieces by the teeth of sheep. Correct then your sheep, good shepherd, and stop them bleating at me, for I am not a wolf lying in wait but a dog protecting sheep. Finally, relying on your favour, I shall hoist the sails of my utterance, and amid the Scyllas of barking tongues voyage forth, with unshaken reason at the tiller.

3. This band of religious places many dire charges on my person, and honours the head of an innocent man with a holy diadem of crimes. They say that my tongue is ‘an unquiet evil’ and is too much in the damp, the tongue that vomited up a book against the abbot of Clairvaux. In fact they assert that this abbot is so holy that he has already come near to heaven and gone beyond what men may think of him. Those who say this, though their religious habit be white, stain their tongue with folly, even though they desire to be doves with no element of serpent. 4. Is not the abbot a man? Does not he, like us, ‘sail over this great sea, which stretcheth wide its arms’, amid ‘creeping things without number?’ His ship may be having a pretty fair voyage, but the calmness of the sea is in doubt. The south wind has not yet assured him that it will not shake his craft.

1. To his most beloved father and lord Pope Innocent, brother Bernard, styled abbot of Clairvaux, the little that he is.

To you as pope are necessarily referred all dangers and scandals that arise in the kingdom of God, and especially those affecting the faith. For I think it proper that any damage done to the faith should be patched up precisely where faith cannot feel a defect. This, in fact, is the privilege of the Holy See. Who else was once addressed in the words, ‘I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not’? So what follows is required of Peter's successor: ‘And thou’, it says, ‘being once converted, confirm thy brethren.’ That is what is needed now. It is time for you, most beloved Father, to recognise your position as prince, to prove your zeal, to honour your ministry. You are clearly playing the part of Peter, whose see too you hold, if by your admonition you confirm hearts that are wavering in the faith, if by your authority you destroy men who are corrupting the faith.

We have in France an old Master become a new theologian. He has since he grew to manhood sported in the art of dialectic; now he is playing the madman in Holy Writ. He is trying to revive doctrines long condemned and put to sleep, his own as well as those of others, and adding new ones too. He claims to be ignorant of nothing of all that is ‘in heaven above and in the earth beneath’, except for the statement ‘I do not know’. He sets his mouth against heaven and searches the deep things of God, and then comes back to us with words ineffable ‘which it is not granted to a man to utter’; and while ready to give a reason concerning everything, even things that are above reason, he presumes both against reason and against faith. For what is more against reason that to try to go beyond reason by means of reason?

To his most beloved companions their most beloved servant, greetings.

1. It is sufficient proof of the glory of the martyr Vincent that when his deeds were written down the Enemy envied his claim to fame. Something of the kind has now happened to me as well, so that a comparison of things similar may be carried through from the greatest to the smallest. For that enemy, long since hidden, who has hitherto pretended to be a friend, in fact my dearest friend, has now burst out into such a blaze of envy that he could not bear the fame won by my writings, for he believed his own glory was diminished by them as much as he thought I was exalted. 2. I had some time ago heard that he had been seriously distressed that I had given the name of Theology to that work of mine on the Holy Trinity, which I composed as the Lord granted. In the end he could by no means tolerate this, and decreed that it should be called Stultilogy rather than Theology. Thanks be to God that the labour I put into this work of mine could have been so highly valued as to be worthy to move first the masters of France, then monks and those judged higher in religious worth, to feel such impudent and patent envy. 3. The Lord will provide for His own work, so as not to allow what I wrote with His inspiration to be destroyed by the malice of the wicked. The more often he raved against it, the more confident I became, with the Lord's consent, that it brought about not the lowering of that work but its exaltation:

4. But you must know that, before I saw the message from your affectionate selves, I had already heard, because people told me of it, what poisonous insults that Datianus of mine vomited up at me: what he belched forth from the depths of his depravity, first at Sens, in the presence of the lord archbishop and many of my friends, and then at Paris, in your hearing and that of others.

On 2 June 1140 or, more probably 25 May 1141, the Council of Sens was held. Originally called by Archbishop Henry in order to solemnly display the relics of Saint Stephen and to deal with a few other minor matters, no other event could more arrestingly show the importance of clerical intellectuals in the Western European culture of the time, or the power of their writing. The Council did not enact reforming legislation; in fact, it was as famous for what it did not do as for what it was expected to do. Around it swirled a flurry of mandatory and condemnatory rhetoric, mainly from the pen of the most persuasive and, in some ways the most conservative, churchman of the day: Bernard of Clairvaux.

In 1140 William of Saint Thierry, abbot of Cistercian Signy, a close friend of Bernard, had begun to read some works of Peter Abelard, notably his Theologia ‘Scholarium’ and Sententiae; his reaction to these works was so negative that in Lent of that year he wrote both to Bernard and to the papal legate in France, Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres, warning them of the threat posed by Abelard's doctrines. He sent them the text of the two works to which he objected, and his own Disputatio criticising them. Bernard was so perturbed by the content of these that he began, in effect, a pamphlet war against Abelard, addressed to the pope and sundry cardinals. In reaction, Abelard appealed to Henry Sanglier, archbishop of Sens, calling for a council at which he could clear his name in debate with Bernard. As mentioned, a council was already imminent, and the great and good of the French Church and realm, from the king down, were to be present. But at that place, when the charges were read out, Abelard refused to debate them, instead appealing to Rome. The proceedings of the Council were halted, and modern historians have wondered why the experienced and charismatic theologian, then in his early sixties, refused this chance to show his prowess.

To the reverend lords and fathers, the bishops and cardinals of the curia, from the child of their holiness.

1. No one doubts that it is your business in particular to remove scandals from the kingdom of God, to cut down thorns as they spring up, to settle disputes. For such was the command of Moses when he ascended the mountain: ‘You have Aaron and Hur with you: if any question shall arise, you shall refer it to them.’ I mean the Moses who came by water, and not in water only, but in ‘water and blood’. Indeed He was more than Moses, for He came in blood also. And since instead of Hur and Aaron we have the zeal and authority of the Roman Church over the people of God, we are right to refer to it not questions, but hurts to the faith and injuries to Christ; insults and scornings to the Fathers; scandals to those living now, perils to those who will come after. The faith of the simple is being laughed at, the secrets of God are being ripped out; questions concerning the deepest matters are being heedlessly opened to discussion; the Fathers are being abused because they judged that such questions should be put to sleep rather than solved. Hence the Paschal Lamb, contrary to God's commandment, is either boiled in water or torn up raw: beastly the practice and beastly the mouth. What is left is not ‘burned with fire’ but trampled underfoot. In this manner human wit is laying claim to everything, keeping nothing back for faith. It is attempting things too high for it, searching into things above its ability; it is rushing into matters divine, defiling holy things rather than unlocking them; it is not opening things shut up and sealed, but tearing them apart; and whatever it finds inaccessible, it thinks of no account, and does not deign to believe it.

To his most beloved father and lord Innocent, by the grace of God supreme pontiff, brother Bernard, styled abbot of Clairvaux, the little that he is.

1. ‘It is necessary that scandals come’: necessary, but not pleasant. That is why the prophet says: ‘Who will give me wings like a dove’s, and I will fly and be at rest?’ And the apostle wishes to be dissolved and to rest with Christ; and another of the holy men says: ‘It is enough for me, Lord, take away my soul: for I am no better than my fathers.’ I too now have something in common with holy men, in will, at any rate, not in merit. For I too should wish to be removed from the scene at this moment, overcome (I confess it) by ‘pusillanimity of spirit and a storm’; but I fear that, though equally afflicted, I may be found not equally prepared. I am tired of living, and I know not if it is profitable to die; and it may be that I differ from holy men in my wishes too: they are spurred on by desire for the better, while I am compelled to depart by scandals and woes. In fine, Paul says: ‘To be dissolved and to be with Christ, a thing by far better.’ Therefore in the holy man longing prevails, and in me feeling; but in this most wretched life he cannot have the good he craves and I cannot but have the distress I suffer. And for this reason we both of us desire to depart: we have the same wish, but not the same motives.

2. I once used to promise myself rest if the madness of the Lion grew quiet and peace were restored to the Church. I was foolish: for look, that madness has grown quiet, but I have not. I did not know that I was ‘in the vale of tears’, or had forgotten that I dwelt ‘in the land of forgetfulness’. I did not notice that the earth in which I dwell was ‘bringing forth thorns and thistles to me’, that when they were cut back new ones were following on them, and that yet others were growing after them, with no intermission. I had heard this; but, as I now find, ‘vexation’ alone ‘makes one understand’ better ‘what one hears’.

To the revered lord and dearest father Stephen by the grace of God bishop of Praeneste, brother Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, ‘to do manfully and be of good heart’ in the Lord.

I announce to you the straits and groans of the Bride of Christ the more confidingly because I know you to be the friend of the Bridegroom and ‘to rejoice with joy because of the Bridegroom's voice’. For ‘I have confidence in you in the Lord’, if I know well your ‘inward man’, that you seek not the things that are yours but those that are Christ Jesus’s. Peter Abelard is proved a persecutor of the Catholic faith and an enemy of the cross of Christ by his life and behaviour and by the books that are now coming forth from darkness into light. He shows himself a monk without, a heretic within, having nothing of a monk except the name and habit. He opens old pits and broken cisterns of heretics so that an ox and an ass may fall in. He had lately been silent for many days; but when he was silent in Brittany ‘he conceived sorrow, and’ now in France ‘he has brought forth iniquity’. There has issued from its cavern ‘a winding serpent’, and like a hydra, when one head was cut off, it produced seven heads instead of the one. One heresy of his was cut off at Soissons; but now in its place seven and more heresies have emerged, of which we took a copy and sent it to you. Raw and naive hearers, far removed from the milk of dialectic, and those who (so to speak) can scarce bear the first elements of the faith, he introduces to the mystery of the Holy Trinity, to the holy of holies, ‘to the king's chamber’, and to him who ‘made darkness his covert’. For example, our theologue joins Arius in subjecting the Trinity to degrees and balances, Pelagius in putting free will before grace, Nestorius in dividing Christ and excluding the man He took on from the fellowship of the Trinity

To the most beloved father and lord Innocent, Bernard, styled abbot of Clairvaux, the little that he is.

‘Weeping’ the Bride of Christ ‘hath wept in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; there is none to comfort her among all them that are dear to her’. ‘While the Bridegroom tarries’, a Sunamite woman has been entrusted to you, lord, in the place of her pilgrimage. To no one does she more familiarly avow the wrongs done her, to no one does she more intimately relate her anxieties and her groans, than to a friend of the Bridegroom. For since you love the Bridegroom, ‘you do not slight’ the Bride when she cries out to you ‘in her wants, in the time of trouble’. Amid all these varieties of enemy by whom the Church of God is besieged, ‘as the lily among thorns’, nothing is more dangerous, nothing more vexing than when she is torn inwardly by those she holds to her bosom, and whom she succours with her breasts. On behalf of such men and concerning such men are spoken the words of one groaning in pain: ‘My friends and my neighbours have drawn near, and stood against me.’ No plague is more effective in harming than an intimate enemy. This is proved by the friendship of Absalom and by the kiss of Judas. ‘Another foundation is being laid for us, but that which is laid.’ A new faith is being forged in France: Of virtues and vices there is no moral discussion, of the sacraments of the Church no discussion according to the faith, of the mystery of the Holy Trinity no straightforward or sober discussion. No, the discussion is beyond what we have been taught. Master Peter, and Arnold from whose plague you cleansed Italy, ‘have stood and met together against the Lord and against His Christ’. Scale ‘is joined’ to scale, ‘and not so much as any air can come between them’. ‘They are corrupt, and are become abominable in their ways’, and from the ferment of their corruption they corrupt the faith of the simple, disturb the order of morality, defile the chastity of the Church.