SIMILAR BOOKS BY CATEGORY
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Pierre Abélard
10 pages (2008/1899); 125KB download
WOWIO Books; ISBN: WOWIO-00484
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“Pierre Abélard’s reputation for oratory and for scholarship was so great that he attracted hearers and disciples from all quarters. They encamped around him like an army and listened to him with such eagerness that the jealousy of some and the honest apprehension of others were excited by the boldness with which he handled religious subjects. He has been called the originator of modern rationalism, and though he was apparently worsted in his contest with his great rival, St. Bernard, he remains the most real and living personality among the great pulpit orators of the Middle Ages. This is due in large part, no doubt, to his connection with the unfortunate Heloise. That story, one of the most romantic, as it is one of the saddest of human history, must be passed over with a mere mention of the fact that it gave occasion for a number of the sermons of Abélard which have come down to us. Several of those were preached in the convent of the Paraclete of which Heloise became abbess,—where, in his old age, her former lover, broken with the load of a life of most extraordinary sorrows, went to die. These sermons do not suggest the fire and force with which young Abélard appealed to France, compelling its admiration even in exciting its alarm, but they prevent him from being a mere name as an orator...
“The extracts from his sermons here given were translated by Rev. J. M. Neale, of Sackville College, from the first collected edition of the works of Abélard, published at Paris in 1616. There are thirty-two such sermons extant. They were preached in Latin, or, at least, they have come down to us in that language.”—David J. Brewer
The three sermons included in this selection are: “The Resurrection of Lazarus”; “The Last Entry into Jerusalem”; and “The Divine Tragedy.”