Willemien Otten - Peter Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux

A webinar delivered by Professor Willemien Otten (University of Chicago) on May 7, 2020. Part of a spring webinar series on "Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought" Peter Abelard (d. 1142) and Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) were contemporaries who both emerged from the new twelfth-century schools. But their dispositions, personalities, and eventual conflict have come to represent a conflict between the rising scholastic and the traditional monastic cultures of learning. Professor Willemien Otten will introduce these iconic twelfth-century personalities, the direction of their work, and the theological controversy that put them on opposing sides.