Also known as "Marriage is the Grave of Love" Zhang Baotong 2016.7.4

In 1136, at the age of 57, Abelard was asked to return to Paris to teach. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info he is inseparable from the classroom, he is destined to be born to teach and debate. The madrass where he taught was the predecessor of the University of Paris, France, and was the cultural center and famous institution of learning throughout Europe at that time. Although he was a controversial figure throughout France and Paris, driven and persecuted everywhere, his fame and writings had a great influence. There is a poem that is a true portrayal of his fate and suffering:

I smiled with tears in my eyes,

Hopelessly waiting

I'm desperate,

will become more and more courageous

I rejoice,

But the interest was lost

I'm a big man,

But they are powerless and powerless

I'm popular everywhere,

Hated by everyone again. ”

Although Eloise wrote to him to return to their convent of the Holy Spirit to take refuge in his old age, he declined Eloise's request to avoid causing her trouble. Since then, they have not exchanged letters for almost a long time. He first left the monastery of St. Kildas and went to an even more unbearable monastery. But everywhere I went, it was very unpleasant. As he had said before, he fell from one cliff to another lion's den in order to avoid the sword. He felt that he had little place on this earth. His fate in this life is bumpy, and fortune and misfortune are unpredictable. Every time he lives a good life for a few days, disaster will follow. And every time he despairs, the light comes unexpectedly. It was as if fate was always playing tricks on him.

He had been freed from the entanglement of feelings and distress, and was thinking about philosophical questions almost all the time. He went on to write several books, including Christian Theology, Yes or No, Introduction to Theology, and Know Thyself, a work of systematic theology. His prestige and erudition opened up an unheard-of world for him, and a large number of young people followed him and became believers in his ideas. However, this also drew much criticism, not least of which was the most intense attack on St. Bernard, the Cistercian abbot. And this Cistercian abbot was the same Bernard of Clairvoy Church, who had severely persecuted Abelard in the Church of the Holy Spirit. It seemed as if he was destined to fight to the death against Abelard.

Especially after the publication of Abelard's representative work on moral philosophy, Know Thyself. It drew even harsher criticism from the church. In the book, he argues that evil arises primarily from intention rather than action, and that no action (even murder) is inherently sinful. So a mother, when her baby is too little clothed to keep her warm, holds her baby tightly in her arms, and as a result, she unintentionally suffocates the baby to death. She killed the one she loved, and although she was punished by law to keep the other women on their toes, she was innocent in the sight of God. Further, for a crime to be constituted, the perpetrator must not only offend others, but more importantly violate his own moral conscience. Therefore, it was not a sin for the Romans to kill Christian martyrs, because they believed that such persecution was necessary to preserve their country or their religion. Not only that, but "even those who persecute Christ and his followers, whom they consider responsible for persecution, are considered guilty of their actions, but if they release Christians against their conscience, the wrongs and sins they commit will be even greater." This explanation, even if logical, is infuriating. However, under this theory, the definition of sin is a blasphemy against God's law, and it also adds an element of misinterpretation of "criminal intent", and who would admit that he acted against his conscience, except for a few characters like Paul? Of the 16 reasons why Abelard was charged in 1141, six were born from this book. This is a clear violation of Christian orthodoxy and deeply disturbs the church.

Because of this book, Abelard began a head-to-head confrontation with the traditional forces of the church, and it also attracted a sea of fierce attacks from Bernard. Bernard also incited the church to criticize Abelard's doctrine.

Opposition to the powerful church put him in a very disadvantageous position. Moreover, his postulate that the definition has no mystery in religious belief, and that all dogmas should be justified, bothered the Church more than any heresy. Perhaps he was so obsessed with logic that he took the "word of God" as a kind of logic. This is an unconventional approach that leads to orthodox conclusions, and if it were just his own, perhaps no one would heed him. Yet hundreds of students eagerly followed him, infected and influenced by his fickle logical cells, and teachers such as William of Concos, Gilbert, and Berenguer of Tours put faith to the test of reason. This challenged the religious beliefs that sustained the moral and social order in Europe. Moreover, one of Abelard's disciples, Arnold of Brescia, was inciting revolution in Italy.

This situation soon aroused the concern and apprehension of St. Bernard, the abbess of the Cistercian Order. The fervent police dog sniffed out the wolves in the flock, and decided to lead his companions on a hunting trip. In fact, he had been watching this stealthy and aggressive brave intellectual, but he did not want to provoke and attack him. When William of Saint-Thierry drew his attention to the danger posed by Abelard's lectures and asked him to come forward to condemn the philosopher, he did so perfunctorily and did nothing against Abelard.

However, Abelard had misjudged that Bernard was gathering forces to lay siege to him, so he wrote to the bishop of Sens on his own initiative, saying that he would have an opportunity to defend himself at the upcoming Christian conference in order to clarify the accusations of heresy against him. The bishop wanted his own cathedral to be the center of attention in Christendom, and immediately agreed to Abelard's request. To ensure a good debate between them, he fanned the flames on both sides and invited Bernard, a prominent ecclesiastical figure in Paris at the time, to attend.

But Bernard's request was not accepted, because he knew that he was "just a child" in the dialectical polemics compared to Abelard, who had 40 years of training in logic. But he wrote to several bishops, urging them to attend to defend the sanctity and dignity of Christ. But they felt that if Bernard did not participate in it, their power would be very weak, so they did everything possible to persuade Bernard to attend the meeting.