Note 26 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
A good idea of the man, and of the rapidly growing school he belonged to, will be formed from the opening sentence of one of his treatises: ‘Rotting in the lake of misery and in the mire of filth, and stuck in the mud of the abyss that has no substance, and from the depths of my grief, I cry out to Thee, O Lord.’ He was in the midst of a similar Bernardesque composition when he received Abélard’s works.