Peter the Venerable: Letter to Pope Innocent II

Abstract

Background: The first of these letters from Peter the Venerable, the letter to Pope Innocent II announcing Abelard’s reconciliation with Bernard of Clairvaux, and asking permission for him to spend the rest of his life at Cluny, was very probably written in the summer of 1141, when Abelard had stopped at Cluny on his way to Rome after the council of Sens.¹ The personal qualities that distinguished him among the most prominent churchmen of this time and the affectionate friendship he showed to both Abelard and Heloise in their later life are displayed in the following letters. Reflecting what Gillian Knight well describes as “studied vagueness” and the “selective narration of events,”² not uncommon characteristics of Peter’s correspondence, his letter is a masterpiece of minimization, aimed at the rescue of Abelard from this latest, and last, of his “calamities.” Without mentioning the council of Sens and Abelard’s condemnation there, or naming the “certain men” involved in it, Peter let its victim speak for himself as one “gravely troubled” by the attacks of these men, “who called him a heretic, a name he abhorred,” and as one seeking to “appeal to apostolic justice and take refuge in its protection.”

Translated from The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Constable, 1.98, 258–59.