Medieval Heresy & the Inquisition

Such subtlety might at times be no better than verbal juggling; but it always indicated an alertness of mind. Such intellectual nimbleness was generally at the service of the Church, used to elucidate doctrine and to uphold and defend the Catholic faith. On the other hand, the curious mind, even when starting with the most innocent and orthodox intent, was sometimes beguiled into surmises and speculations of a dangerous nature. Logic, if unrestrained, has a way of leading to untraditional conclusions. When this happened, it was possible to escape from an awkward dilemma by submitting that philosophy was one thing, theology another, and that two truths could exist on two different planes, even if they were mutually contradictory. But this convenient compromise was obviously only a pious subterfuge and was grotesquely illogical.

Unfortunately, both of the two principal schools of thought were prone to lead to error. Realism, which found reality in the "universal substance"—subordinating the individual to humanity and humanity to the Godhead—logically led to Pantheism. Meanwhile, Nominalism, finding reality solely in each disjointed unit, if applied to theology, left no choice except between Unitarianism and Tritheism. In 1092, a nominalist philosopher named Roscellinus was condemned at Soissons for teaching Tritheism and denying the Trinity. Another nominalist, Berengar of Tours, skillfully dissected the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which had grown up in its crudest form during the Dark Ages and was first really developed in an answer to Berengar by Anselm of Bec. There was a greater figure than either Roscellinus or Berengar, who was neither a nominalist nor a realist, but a conceptualist: the greatest of all the wandering scholars of his time, Abelard, gifted with extraordinary vividness of personality and brilliance of intellect. Abelard’s love story in actual fact is as wonderful as that of Aucassin in the world of romance. His teaching has the same note of freedom and fearlessness as that which sounds so clear in the old French story. There was nothing very alarming in his doctrines; his conclusions were generally orthodox enough.