Compià ̈gne about 1050, and taught at Loches, in Brittany, where Abélard was his pupil. He
was accused of heresy at a council at Rheims in 1092, and recanted for fear of being stoned to
death by ecclesiastics with a taste for lynching. He fled to England, but there he was rash enough
to attack Saint Anselm. This time he fled to Rome, where he was reconciled to the Church. He
disappears from history about 1120; the date of his death is purely conjectural.
Nothing remains of Roscelin's writings except a letter to Abélard on the Trinity. In this letter he
belittles Abélard and makes merry over his castration. Ueberweg, who seldom displays
emotion, is led to observe that he can't have been a very nice man. Apart from this letter,
Roscelin's views are chiefly known through the controversial writings of Anselm and Abélard.
According to Anselm, he said that universals are mere flatus vocis, "breath of the voice." If this is
to be taken literally, it means that a universal is a physical occurrence, that, namely, which takes
place when we pronounce a word. It is hardly to be supposed, however, that Roscelin maintained
anything so foolish. Anselm says that, according to Roscelin, man is not a unity, but only a
common name; this view Anselm, like a good Platonist, attributes to Roscelin's only conceding
reality to what is sensible. He seems to have held, generally, that a whole which has parts has no
reality of its own, but is a mere word; the reality is in the parts. This view should have led him,
and perhaps did lead him, to an extreme atomism. In any case, it led him into trouble about the
Trinity. He considered that the Three Persons are three distinct substances, and that only usage
stands in the way of our saying that there are Three Gods. The alternative, which he does not
accept, is, according to him, to say that not only the Son, but the Father and the Holy Ghost, were
incarnate. All this speculation, in so far as it was heretical, he recanted at Rheims in 1092. It is
impossible to know exactly what he thought about universals, but at any rate it is plain that he was
some sort of nominalist.
His pupil Abélard (or Abailard) was much abler and much more distinguished. He was born
near Nantes in 1079, was a pupil of William of Champeaux (a realist) in Paris, and then a teacher
in the Paris cathedral school, where he combated William's views and compelled him to modify
them. After a period devoted to the study of theology under Anselm of Laon (not the archbishop),
he returned