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Life and works of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux
Life and works of Saint Bernard Abbot of Clairvaux Author:Bernard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTE THE FOLLOWING TREATISE. 1. The following Letter, which is the 19othof S. Bernard, was ranked by Horst among the Treatises, on account of its length an... more »d importance. It was written on the occasion of the condemnation of the errors of Abaelard by the Council of Sens, in 114o, in the presence of a great number of French Bishops, and of King Louis the Younger, as has been described in the notes to Letter 187. In the Synodical Epistle, which is No. 191 of S. Bernard, and in another, which is No. 337, the Fathers of the Council announced to Pope Innocent that they had condemned the errors of Abaelard, but had pronounced no sentence against him personally out of respect for the appeal which he had made to the Holy See ; and they add that " the chief heads of his errors are more fully detailed in the Letter of the Bishop of Sens." I think that the Letter of which mention is thus made can be no other than that given here, and in which we find, in fact, the chief heads of Abaelard's errors, with a summary refutation of each. They are also the same as those which William, who had become a simple monk at Igny, after having been Abbot of Saint Thierry, had addressed to Geoffrey, Bishop of Chartres, and to Bernard, in a Letter which is inserted among those of Bernard. 2. As regards the different errors imputed to Abaelard, there are some which he complained were wrongly attributed to him. Others, on the contrary, he recognized as his, and corrected them in his Apology, in which he represents Bernard as being his only opponent, his malignantand hasty denouncer. Two former partizans of Abaelard himself, but who had long recoiled from his errors, Geoffrey, who afterwards was the Secretary of Bernard, and " a certain Abbot of the Black Monks," whtfse name is unknown, attempted to justi...« less