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The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Peter Abelard (1079–1142)
Abelard, Peter (ä-bā-lär’ or á-be-lard). A noted French scholastic philosopher and theologian; born near Nantes, 1079; died on April 21, 1142. Lecturing on theology, he attracted students from all parts of Europe. Several of his disciples afterward became famous; for example, Pope Celestin II., Peter Lombard, Berengarius, and Arnold of Brescia. Trained in both the nominalist and the realist schools of thought he abandoned both for a position which came to be known as conceptualism. In this he showed himself the most forceful thinker of his time. The story of his romantic and tragic love for Héloïse, of the marriage which she denied that she might be no hindrance to Abelard in ecclesiastical advancement, and of the consequent revenge of her uncle Fulbert, has been taken by the poets as the theme of their elegies in every age since the death of the lovers. (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).