At first it seemed Bernard might not survive. He lapsed in and out of consciousness, intermittently recognised his brother, weakly blessing him anew each time, and called the nun ‘mother’, which seemed to please her no end.
On the twentieth day, Bernard’s fever broke and he became aware of his surroundings.
He propped himself to a sitting posture as his brother adjusted his coverlet. ‘Who brought me here?’ he asked.
‘Gerard and some of the monks from Clairvaux.’
Bernard rubbed the grit from his eyes and artfully concealed chastisement as compliment. ‘Look at you! You look well, Barthomieu!’ His older brother was fleshy and robust, his complexion pink as a pig, his hair in need of updated tonsuring.
‘I’m a little fat,’ Barthomieu said, defensively patting his middle through his good linen robe.
‘How is that?’
‘The abbot here is not so strict as you!’
‘Ah, I have heard that said about me,’ Bernard said. His down-cast eyes made it impossible to tell if he rued the austerity he had imposed on his community or Barthomieu’s dismissiveness. ‘How is your life here, brother? Are you serving Christ fully?’
‘I believe I am, but I fear you will look upon my contentment with suspicion. I do love it here, Bernard. I feel I have found my place.’
‘What do you do beyond prayer and meditation? Have you a vocation?’ He recalled his brother’s aversion to manual labour.
Barthomieu acknowledged he was more inclined to indoors pursuits. His abbot had freed him from planting and harvesting. There was a small scriptorium at Ruac turning out copies of The Rule of St Benedict for a tidy profit and he had been apprenticed to a venerable monk with a practised hand. He was also adept at caring for the ill, as Bernard had come to witness first-hand. He assisted Brother Jean, the infirmarer, and spent a good hour a day scuttling around the infirmary, making sure the fires were ample, lighting the candles for Matins, cleaning the bowls that had been used for bloodletting, washing the feet of the sick and shaking their clothing of fleas.
He hoisted Bernard to his feet, let the skeleton of a man lean on his back as he held the piss pot for him. He enthusiastically commented on the improved flow and colour of his brother’s urine. ‘Come,’ Barthomieu said when he was done, ‘take a few steps with me.’
Over the weeks, the few steps turned to many and Bernard was able to take short walks in the spring air and start attending mass. The old abbot, Etienne, and his prior, Louis, were both entrenched in the ancient Benedictine ways and were, as they admitted to each other, rather fearful of the esteemed young man. He was a fire-brand, a reformer, and their provincial minds were no match for his intellect and powers of persuasion. They hoped he would see fit to be a humble guest and let them keep their casks of wine and the likes of dear old Sister Clotilde.
One day while strolling in the meadow by the infirmary, Barthomieu pointed to the low building and remarked, ‘You know, Bernard, there is a cleric here, sent to Ruac by confidants to recover from a horrific injury, who is the only man I ever met who is your equal in discourse, knowledge and learning. Perhaps when he is stronger, you may wish to meet him, and he, you. His name is Pierre Abelard and, though you will vigorously disapprove of certain aspects of his tempestuous life, you will surely find him more stimulating than your dull brother.’
The seed planted, Bernard wondered about this Abelard. As spring turned to summer and his strength increased, each time he walked the perimeter of the abbey, he would peer into the arched windows of the infirmary hoping to catch a glimpse of the mystery man. Finally, one morning after Prime prayers, Barthomieu told him that Abelard had requested a visit. But before it took place, he felt his brother was obliged to hear Abelard’s story, so that neither man would need to suffer embarrassment.
In his youth, Abelard had been sent to Paris to study at the great cathedral school of Notre-Dame under the same William of Champeaux, now Bernard’s superior. Before long, the young scholar was able to defeat his master in rhetoric and debate and at the age of only twenty-two had established his own school outside Paris where students from all over the land elbowed each other to be at his side. Within ten years, he himself would occupy the chair at Notre-Dame and by 1115 he had become its canon. Bernard interrupted at this point and remarked that yes, of course, he had heard of this brilliant scholar and wondered what had become of him!
The answer: a woman named Heloise.
Abelard met her when she was fifteen, young and petite, already skilled and renowned in classical letters. She lived in Paris in the gilded home of her uncle, the wealthy canon Fulbert. Abelard was so smitten he arranged for her uncle to give him lodgings for the ostensible purpose of rendering private tutoring to the sharp-minded girl.
Who seduced whom would become a matter of debate but no one could deny that a passionate affair did ensue. Abelard giddily ignored his teaching duties and indiscreetly allowed songs he had written about her to be sung in public. Tragically, their affair culminated in a pregnancy. Abelard had her sent away to his relatives in Brittany. There she delivered a child she called Astrolabe after the astronomical instrument, a name that spoke volumes about Heloise’s striking modernity.
The child was left in the care of her sister and the two lovers returned to Paris where Abelard began to tensely negotiate a pact with her uncle. He would agree to marry her but he refused to make the marriage public lest his position at Notre-Dame be compromised. Fulbert and he almost came to blows over disagreement on this point. In turmoil, Abelard convinced Heloise to remove herself to the nunnery at Argenteuil, where she had gone to school as a girl.
She went against her will, for she was an earthly person with no inclination towards a religious life. She sent Abelard letters questioning why she had to submit to a life to which she had no calling, especially a life that required their separation.
It was 1118, a few months before Bernard had arrived at the Abbey Ruac. Her uncle was incensed that Abelard had seemingly dealt with the inconvenience of his niece by sending her off instead of publicly taking a stand for an honest union. Fulbert could not let the matter rest peacefully. He bade three of his sycophants to accost Abelard in his rooming house. Two held him down on his bed and one used a knife to crudely castrate him like a farm animal. They plopped his severed testicles into his wash basin and left him moaning in a coagulating pool of blood.
Abelard hoped to die but he did not. He was a freak now, an abomination. In agony he contemplated his fate: did not God Himself reject eunuchs, excluding them from His service as unclean creatures? Fever set in and the numbing asthenia of blood loss. He languished in a dangerously precarious state until William of Champeaux, that perennial protector of fine minds, intervened and sent him to Ruac to be attended by the noted infirmarer, Brother Jean. And in that peaceful countryside, after a long physical and spiritual convalescence, he was ready to meet Ruac’s other notable invalid, Bernard of Clairvaux.
Bernard would long remember their first encounter. He waited outside the infirmary that summer morning and there emerged a dangerously thin, stoop-shouldered man with a domed forehead marked with worry lines and a shy almost boyish smile. His gait was slow and shuffling and Bernard winced in empathy. Abelard was forty, an old forty, and despite his own infirmity Bernard felt robust compared to this poor soul.
Abelard extended his hand, ‘Abbot Bernard, I have so wanted to meet you. I know well your esteemed reputation.’
‘And I too have wanted to meet you.’
‘We have much in common.’
Bernard arched an eyebrow.
‘We both love God,’ Abelard said, ‘and we both have been nursed back to health by Sister Clotilde’s green soups and Brother Jean’s brown infusions. Come, let us walk, but pray not too swiftly.’
From that day forward, the two men were constant companions. Bernard could scarcely believe his good fortune. Abelard was more than his equal in matters of theology and logic. Through debate and discourse, he was able to exercise his mind as well as his body. As they took the air, they discussed Plato and Aristotle, realism and nominalism, the morality of man, matters concrete and abstract. They verbally sparred, swapping roles of teacher and student, lost in argument for hours at a time. Barthomieu would sometimes look up from his chores and point out the infirmary windows towards the two men walking the meadow, gesticulating. ‘Look, Brother Jean. Your patients are thriving.’
Bernard was keen to talk about the future – his desire to reengage in church matters, his ardour for
