He was seventeen when the First Crusade began, and twenty when the crusaders captured Jerusalem.
Two of the men who most profoundly influenced the times in which Abelard lived were Hildebrand, famous as Pope Gregory VII, and Louis VI (the Fat), king of France.

It was to Hildebrand that the Church owed much of that regeneration of the spirit which gave it such vitality throughout the twelfth century.

Hildebrand died, indeed, when Abelard was only six years old, but he left the Church such a force in the affairs of men as it had never been before.

As for Louis the Fat, who reigned from 1108 to 1137, it was he who began to lift the royal power in France out of the shadow which the slothfulness and incompetence of his immediate predecessors, Henry I and Philip I, had cast over it.

Discerning enough to see that the chief enemies of the crown were the great nobles, and constantly advised by a minister of exceptional wisdom, Suger, abbot of St.
Denis, Louis did his utmost to protect the towns and the churches, and to bring that small part of France wherein his power was felt out of the anarchy and chaos of the eleventh century.
It was the France of Louis VI and Sager which formed the background for the great battle between the realists and the nominalists, the battle in which Abelard played no small part.