..," etc. Thanks to his
machinations, Abelard was compelled to recant at the Council of Sens,
and was condemned by the Pope to eternal silence. Berengar of Poitier
took Abelard's part, and in a satirical treatise ventured to criticise
St. Bernard's conduct: "Thus philosophise the old women at the looms. Of
course, when Bernard tells us that we must love God, he speaks a true
and venerable word; but he need not have opened his lips to do so, for
it is a self-evident truth." As a matter of fact, these words branded
and contradicted the merely subjective emotional mysticism; to the
emotional mystic salvation lies in the "absorption in God," in
shapeless, thoughtless contemplation. Richard of St. Victor, founding
his theories on St. Bernard, established six stages of meditation. The
Franciscan monk, Bonaventura, the famous author of the _Biblia
Pauperum_, added a seventh, a complete rest in God--"like the Sabbath
after the six days of labour." To Bonaventura, as later on to Dante, the
world was a ladder leading up to God.
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