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Name:
Peter Abelard
Dates:
Born: 1079 at Le Pallet, outside Nantes, Brittany
Died: April 21, 1142
Studied with Anselm: c. 1112
Entered Cloister: 1118
Teachings Condemned: 1141
Biography:
Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was a French theologian who was part of the scholastic
tradition and whose history is cataloged in the autobiographical work Historia
Calamitatum Mearum (The Story of My Misfortunes). One of the things he is
most famous for is an explanation for the problem of universals: do universal
characteristics exist independently of the particular things that have them, or not?
According to realists they do, according to nominalists they do not, and according to conceptualists they do so - but only mentally.
Abelard's position was that of conceptualism, and he offered as an explanation the idea of mental abstraction. Only individual things exist, but by focusing on one characteristic shared by many objects, we can "know" this characteristics as if it were a "thing" in its own right.
Abelard is also famous because developed a relationship with a student, Héloïse. She is often portrayed as a teenager, but she many believe that she was in her 20s and she eventually became his secret wife. The relationship provoked great anger on the part of her uncle, Fulbert, a canon of Paris who had Abelard castrated. Both Abelard and Héloïse ended up in seclusion abbeys, although they continued to love each other and engaged in an extended correspondence.
Abelard had many opponents in the Catholic Church, not least among them was St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard not only objected to Abelard's humanism, but also to what he thought was a rationalism which deprecated the importance of faith. Through the efforts of Bernard, Abelard's teachings were condemned at the council of Sens in 1141.
Abelard was also attacked for his view of the atonement. According to him, Christ did not die in order to repay our sins, but instead to serve as an example of love and mercy, thus reminding us of what we need to do and how we must behave. This was eventually labeled the "moral influence" theory of atonement, because Christ was supposed to be an influence on us rather than a ransom for us.
For many, however, this perspective was too weak in how it treated sin. It appeared that a person could be capable of doing good and avoiding sin if they only knew how - a position which was very close to Pelagius' and Abelard was accordingly accused of the Pelagian heresy.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: Peter Abailard
Common Misspellings: none
Related Resources:
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