For and Against Abelard

The famous letters of Bernard of Clairvaux attacking the philosopher Peter Abelard and a vituperative response to them are presented together for the first time. The late eleventh and twelfth centuries were Europe's first age of pamphlet warfare, of invective and satire. The perceived failure, or at least hypocrisy, of its new institutions-the new monastic orders and the reformed papacy-gave rise to the phenomenon, and it was shaped by the study of grammar and rhetoric in the new Schools. The ce