" In the famous legend of Tannhaeuser, the erring
knight makes his way to Rome, to seek absolution at what was then the
centre of Christian religion. "So soon," thought and said the Pope, "as
the staff in his hand should bud and blossom, so soon might the soul of
Tannhaeuser be saved, and no sooner; and it came to pass not long after
that the dry wood of a staff which the Pope had carried in his hand was
covered with leaves and flowers." So, in the cloister of Godstow a
petrified tree was shown, of which the nuns told that the fair Rosamond,
who had died among them, had declared that, the tree being then alive
and green, it would be changed into stone at the hour of her salvation.
When Abelard died, like Tannhaeuser, he was on his way to Rome: what
might have happened had he reached his journey's end is uncertain; and
it is in this uncertain twilight that his relation to the general
beliefs of his age has always remained. In this, as in other things, he
prefigures the character of the Renaissance, that movement in which, in
various ways, the human mind wins for itself a new kingdom of feeling
and sensation and thought, not opposed to, but only beyond and
independent of the spiritual system then actually realised.
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