There were few formal laws but there was _Custom_ which was a sovereign law in itself, and above all there was the moral law of the Church, establishing its great fundamental principles but leaving details to the working out of life itself.

Behind the sin of Abelard lay his intolerable spiritual pride, his selfishness and his egotism, qualities that society at large did not recognize because of their devotion to his engaging personality and their admiration for his dazzling intellectual gifts.

Their idol had sinned, he had been savagely punished, he had repented; that was all there was about it and the question was at an end.
In reading the Historia Calamitatum there is one consideration that suggests itself that is subject for serious thought.

Written as it was some years after the great tragedy of his life, it was a portrait that somehow seems out of focus.

We know that during his early years in Paris Abelard was a bold and daring champion in the lists of dialectic; brilliant, persuasive, masculine to a degree; yet this self-portrait is of a man timid, suspicious, frightened of realities, shadows, possibilities.