Letter CXCI. To the Same, in the Person of the Archbishop of Rheims
(A.D. 1140.)
That the Pope should use his authority to repress the a r roga nee of Abaclard.
To their most revered Lord and dear Father, INNOCENT, by the grace of God Supreme Pontiff, SAMSON, Archbishop of Rheims, JoscELix, Bishop of Soissons, GEOFFREY, Bishop of Chalons, and ALVISUS, Bishop of Arras, send their willing testimony of the obedience they owe.
1. As your time is occupied with many things we send a short account of a lengthy matter, and the more especially as a longer and fuller account is contained in the letters of the Bishop of Sens. Peter Abaelard is endeavouring to destroy the virtue of the Christian faith, inasmuch as he thinks that he is able to comprehend the whole that God is by his unaided human reason, he is ascending to the skies, he is descending to the depths. There is nothing which can escape him, either in the heights above or in the depths beneath. He is a man great in his own eyes, a disputer of the faith against the faith, a man who busies himself about great and wonderful matters which are out of his reach, a prier into the Majesty of God, a manufacturer of heresies. He had not long since put forth a treatise on the Trinity, which was tried by the fire under the command of the Legate of the Roman Church,1 because iniquity was found in it. Cursed was he who rebuilt the ruins of Jericho. That book has risen from the dead, and with it the heresies of many which had slept have arisen, and appeared unto many. Now, his heresy is spreading out its boughs unto the sea, and its branches even to Rome. It is his boast that his book has where to lay its head even in the Roman Curia. Hence his phrensy is strengthened and confirmed. Therefore, when the Abbot of Clairvaux, armed with zeal for the faith and for righteousness, was arguing about his heresies in the presence of the Bishops, he neither confessed nor denied, but in order to prolong his wickedness, though he had received neither injury nor wrong, he appealed from the place and judge which he had himself chosen to the Apostolic See. Then the Bishops who had assembled for the purpose of deciding did nothing against his person, in deference to your authority, but only censured, as a medicinal necessity, to prevent the disease spreading, the articles from his books which had already been condemned by the holy Fathers. Because, then, the man is drawing a multitude after him, and has a whole people as believers in him, it is necessary for you to meet this contagion with a swiftly-working remedy, for When ills through long delays grow strong.
Too late is medicine prepared.2
We have advanced in this matter as far as we dared. For the rest it is your part, Blessed Father, to take care that in your days no spot of heretical depravity stains the fair beauty of the Church. To thee, O friend of the bridegroom, has the bride of Christ been entrusted; it is thine to present her, a chaste virgin, to one husband, even to Christ.
Footnotes
Chapter 191 of 491