Most of the learned men of the time were less devoted to dialectic than Abélard was. There
was, especially in the School of Chartres, a humanistic movement, which admired antiquity,
and followed Plato and Boethius. There was a renewed interest in mathematics: Adelard of Bath
went to Spain early in the twelfth century, and in consequence translated Euclid.
As opposed to the dry scholastic method, there was a strong mystical movement, of which Saint
Bernard was the leader. His father was a knight who died in the first Crusade. He himself was a
Cistercian monk, and in 1115 became abbot of the newly-founded abbey of Clairvaux. He was
very influential in ecclesiastical politics--turning the scales against antipopes, combating heresy
in Northern Italy and Southern France, bringing the weight of orthodoxy to bear on adventurous
philosophers, and preaching the second Crusade. In attacking philosophers he was usually
successful; but after the collapse of his Crusade he failed to secure the conviction of Gilbert de
la Porrée, who agreed with Boethius more than seemed right to the saintly heresy-hunter.
Although a politician and a bigot, he was a man of genuinely religious temperament, and his
Latin hymns have great beauty. * Among those influenced by him, mysticism became
increasingly dominant, till it passed into something like heresy in Joachim of Flora (d. 1202).
The influence of this man, however, belongs to a later time. Saint Bernard and his followers
sought religious truth, not in reasoning, but in subjective experience and contemplation.
Abélard and Bernard are perhaps equally one-sided.
Bernard, as a religious mystic, deplored the absorption of the papacy in worldly concerns, and
disliked the temporal power. Although he preached the Crusade, he did not seem to understand
that a war requires organization, and cannot be conducted by religious enthusiasm alone. He
complains that "the law of Justinian, not the law of the Lord" absorbs men's attention. He is
shocked when the Pope defends his domain by military force. The function of the Pope is
spiritual, and he should not attempt actual government. This point of view, however, is
combined with unbounded reverence for the Pope, whom he calls "prince of bishops, heir of the
apostles, of the
* Medieval Latin hymns, rhymed and accentual, give expression, sometimes sublime,
sometimes gentle and pathetic, to the best side of the religious feeling of the times.